Comments on: Changing Fonts

By: lefty

lefty — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 18:50:28 +0000

I just realized that I never answered your question. I’m fine with using CSS to specify a couple of unique fonts for a website, absolutely. I am totally pro-CSS. But your stylesheet lists seven fonts! And two of them are pretty much guaranteed to be installed on every computer that can browse the web. If I don’t want to use those fonts, I’m forced to either uninstall them or set an all-or-nothing preference that will be enforced on every single site I visit, whether I want that or not.

I don’t design sites for a living, but it seems to me like the guideline ought to be that you shouldn’t specify any font unless your site has a real functional need for one, or at most you should specify either “serif” or “sans serif”, and let the user’s settings win out after that.

(For the record, my browsers at home are set up to use News Gothic as their sans-serf font, at least on websites that allow me the choice. Is it much different than many of the other sans-serf fonts around? No, not really. But that’s not the point.)

By: Elliotte Rusty Harold

Elliotte Rusty Harold — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:02:25 +0000

Au contraire, this is exactly how CSS is supposed to work. The site chooses what it likes, and if you prefer something else you override that choice. User preferences win of course.

I’ve noticed when reading the blogs of some people with better taste than me that their fonts really jump out, and far more legible than what I picked. I’ve also noted the reverse on many occasions. In picking the fonts I’ve used here, I’ve tried to copy the best examples I’ve seen elsewhere.

I’m curious what font you prefer, if it’s not listed in the list anywhere. Maybe a serif font?

By: lefty

lefty — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 17:59:34 +0000

Why are you specifying fonts in your stylesheets at all? I know what font I’d like to use to read text, and it’s not any of the ones listed in your CSS. I shouldn’t have to tell Firefox to always override a site’s fonts or uninstall Helvetica and Arial from my machine to have a pleasant web browsing experience. I’m not saying there’s never a reason to specify a font, but for a site that is basically a long text file (presentation-wise) it seems kind of pointless.

By: Andreas Schödl

Andreas Schödl — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 16:52:07 +0000

After installing the Vera fonts, the text looked very washed-out. Employing Windows anti-aliasing in “default” setting was found to be guilty for this. When switching to ClearType things improved for the site, but other stuff on the desktop took on a fuzzy look. Switching anti-aliasing off altogether solved it for my Dell’s notebook screen.
Fine font, thanks for sharing that!

By: robert

robert — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:58:27 +0000

The best, so far, was Constant Willison used by O’Reilly (you’ve heard of them). When Frank died, so did their use of the font. I never saw anything that he was the owner of the font. Perhaps it was all a coincidence.