[thelist] fonts - ok not to define them?

[Diane Soini]

On Wednesday, July 14, 2004, at 02:03 AM, 
thelist-request at lists.evolt.org wrote:
>
> Serif fonts are not as screen readable as sans-serif. I define the font
> family as:
>
> font-family: Verdana,Helvetica,Lucida,Arial,sans-serif;
>
> Verdana for Windows
> Helvetica for Mac
> Lucida for Unix/Linux
> Arial to specify another sans-serif
> sans-serif to choose a generic sans-serif if none of the other fonts 
> exist
>
> d

Unfortunately, Verdana is also on Mac. I'm not very fond of Verdana 
because it doesn't look like the same font at different sizes.

> It is "smaller then the font size the user has picked" or, if the user 
> doesn't know how to use their software then it is "smaller then the 
> font size that very large companies with lots of money to spend on 
> usability testing have picked".
>
> See how now? :)

When I hadn't defined a font, every Windows machine I looked on must 
have had Verdana as the default font because the font size never looked 
very small to me. At 80% the font size looked more like 90% on Mac. But 
once I defined a font, the size does look a bit small, but no smaller 
than lots of web sites where the text is small.

So what is the font size all those expensive usability test have 
determined to be best?

>
> --
> David Dorward
***
Don't be afraid to try something new. An amateur built the ark. 
Professionals built the Titanic. -unknown