Fonts

[Walt_Crawford at notes.rlg.org]

Here's a question that has nothing to do with any particular institution's
home page (and I can stand flames...):

For most material on most Web pages, why specify typeface (font) at all,
either through CSS or directly?

I take it as a given that you shouldn't specify absolute type sizes,
particularly in a world where 133dpi notebooks (some Dell and IBM models)
exist alongside 72dpi desktops (the traditional Mac setting)...

Which is another way of saying: Why not let the user read your page in both
the size and type that he/she prefers?
With exceptions for logos and banners and the like, of course...

That way you make the sans fans happy, those who prefer serif and maybe a
particular serif happy, and those who either want/need type to be larger
happy--along with those who, perhaps for a special purpose, want it
smaller.

(Yes, we practice what I'm preaching in Eureka, even though we do use "
+1/-1" relative sizes rather than %, which we'll probably change. Comments
on our other sins, namely tables and Javascript, not currently invited.)

I was reminded of the benefits of this openness when doing some OpenURL
testing. By setting IE to "smallest," I could get almost twice as many
brief records on the screen at once. I wouldn't want to read long text that
way, but it was perfect for this purpose.

For an eye-opening experience, set your browser's default typeface to
something truly distinctive but still at least legible enough so you can
see what you're doing--for example, I think most Windows PCs will have
Blackadder, Bradley Hand, Lucida Calligraphy, or a bunch of other
options--then browse through some of your favorite sites.

(I did this in the home pages and online catalogs of every one of RLG's
members, as part of our decision-making about forcing fonts in Eureka... At
the time, in February 2002, almost exactly two-thirds of the online
catalogs, 112 out of 154, used the "user's choice" typeface. That's unusual
relative to more popular Web sites.)

OK, now you can tell me why your opinion of the best typeface should
override my preferences. Incidentally, a font is a typeface in one
particular size and style, but that battle is probably hopeless. (12 pt
italic Times New Roman is a font. Times New Roman is a typeface.)

-walt crawford-
Who should probably note that, although I'm mentioning Eureka, these are my
comments and do not necessarily reflect the corporate opinion of RLG