What Makes a Good Web Font

SitePoint writes "We've published an article on the way in which fonts are used on the Web. We found that a large "x-height" (the height of a lowercase 'x' in relation to the total height of the font) makes fonts more readable on a computer screen, as does a wide "punch width" (the width of the hole inside letters such as 'o' and 'b'). Helvetica is a good font to use online. The designer's choice of fonts is usually limited by the user's OS, but techniques such as SIFr (example) are allowing Web designers to provide their own fonts."

Comments

Heck, that's easy

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes a good web font? Well anything combined with BLINK and to a lesser extent, underlines of course!

Re:Let the user choose

[meringuoid]

Surely the choice of font ought to be something individuals can set up in their web browser. A website doesn't really have much business selecting particular named fonts, content versus presentation and all that.

Don't you need written permission from the content provider to do that? You know, taking their intellectual property and creating your own derivative work by applying your own formatting preferences to it... Surely web designers should specify exactly how they want their page to appear, and browsers should render it as they intended; doing otherwise is probably a DMCA violation. Indeed, using a non-standard browser is probably a violation in itself; Firefox does not render many standards-compliant websites correctly, and so is creating unauthorised derivative works. The Mozilla foundation is probably liable for a fortune.

note: by 'standards' we mean Internet Explorer 6, which is the industry standard and is all that should be necessary for development and testing.

(sigh)

The worrying thing is there are PHBs around who really will think like this.

There is only one font for corporates in 2005/6

[Anonymous Coward]

Comic Sans

mu$7 b3 |337 fr13nd|y

[OctoberSky]

17 n33d$ 70 b3 |337-4b|3 0r 17 \/\/1|| m1$$ 7h3 12-18 d3m09r4ph1c.

*NOTE: I had to use a Leet Speak generator to write that, I know what it says and I still can't read it.

Re:Works for handwriting too!

[Angostura]

"practically as fast"

AKA "slower"

Comic Sans MS

[Anonymous Coward]

http://bancomicsans.com/home.html

Re:Let the user choose

[Pieroxy]

Clearly, it is true that Firefox violates the most basic standards by omitting a well-know and widely used tag for making text better. IE integrates it since version 3, and it is rightly so that it is the best *cough* browser as of today.

MARQUEE implementation should be required before a piece of code should be called a 'browser'.

Re:Let the user choose

[maxwell demon]

Indeed, the current Web experience is lacking. Web sites should be able to set the screen resolution for the viewer, so that sites optimized for a certain resolution can be displayed optimally on every computer. It's really a shame that there's not yet an API to do it. :-)

Comic Sans

[Nikkodemus]

Comic Sans, when I design web pages using Comic Sans Bold, I can often visualise expressions of satisfaction and almost.. ecstacy, on the faces of the people browsing my humble pages.

I don't often get repeat work, but I feel I've done my bit for society.

Re:Works for handwriting too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since then, my writing has been like that: printed, with large rounded centres to the letters and very minimal ascenders and descenders.

So I guess the next step is to start using hearts to dot your i's and smiley faces to fill your o's.

What! Outrage!

[mister_llah]

12 to 18! I'm 27 and I understood that just fine.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go cry myself to sleep.

Re:Let the user choose

[InsaneLampshade]

You mean your browser *won't* let you download fonts?

http://www.1001fonts.com

;)