[thelist] Breaking away from "Standard" Fonts

[Felix Miata]

On 06/03/09 14:54 Rob Smith apparently typed:

> We all know about the 7 or so standard fonts guaranteed to work in any
> browser. 

> C) What problems have you encountered?

Actually the normal (common) fonts are as likely as not to be a problem 
of one sort or another. Authors seem to little short of universally set 
'Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif' or 'Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif' or 
variations thereof that include Verdana and/or Geneva. Helvetica is a 
bitmap font on Linux and so is really best avoided entirely, and the 
relative giant Verdana has its own problems as a result of its large 
size. http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/font-helvetica.html 
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/verdana.html

By choosing some combination of those 4 common fonts and/or Times* 
and/or Georgia you guarantee huge numbers of users won't see their 
favorite, and by so doing you also guarantee huge numbers won't see the 
physical size of their choice either (regardless if your CSS is 
user-default based on nominal size or not). Compare them yourself: 
http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/fonts-face-commons.html

So, usually I set body copy simply to sans-serif, and limit use of 
common and uncommon families to font samples, menus, headings and other 
peripherals, and recommend others do likewise, or less. 
http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/userdefaultbased.html
-- 
"Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according
to the law of the Lord."	        	Psalm 119:11 NIV

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata  ***  http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/auth