I think like everyone else I started out liking Verdana at 10px. Then like everyone else again, I became quite partial to Georgia with its cute numerals. And yes, I’ve been through a Trebuchet phase as well. I like those little bends as well.

There are only so many screen fonts to choose from, you’re bound to end up trying them all. Or most.

I wish they would come up with more screen fonts.

IMHO Verdana 11px is the best screen font that’s readable without looking clunky. Verdana 13px has a slightly more open spacing than 12px. If you want to use 12px, Verdana Bold is better looking.

But you know what, I still think Geneva 12px is really the best… with Chicago 12px as its bold.

I don’t really care for serifs for screen use, but New York is probably the most readable. Gergia at 12px is a bit too tight.

And of course Underware’s Unibody, at 8px! Especially the upright italic!

The Quartz business in OS X is driving my nuts. If you don’t anti-aliase (everything above 12 gets anti-aliased anyway), the spacing is all screwed up. Do you know of any shareware extensions that would correct this?

I’m on XP right now…

I don’t know about switching the text aliasing on though — I don’t know any “normal” Windows users who do that… I think 90% or more sees the web with non-aliased text…

You know on the Mac, I like to define verdana at 10.5px. I think it’s the perfect size. Unfortunately, on a PC, it becomes 11px which is too big for me.

And yes unibody is oh-so-sweet. And it’s so nice of them to give it away.

I don’t know what you mean by the Quartz business but the anti-aliasing is driving me LOONY. Everything is so fuzzy wuzzy. And that is the least of the OSX suite of problems.

I can’t find anything. There is no manual. And I as if my dear old Mac has been possessed by a PC! I’m so lost, I think I’ll be sticking to the classic mode for as long as I can.

Georgia Bold at 16 PPEM.

hhp

“I like to define verdana at 10.5px”

How do you render half a pixel?

Hmmm. Damn good question, darrel. I don’t know. I’ll post back if I find something.

Something’s different though.

> How do you render half a pixel?

1) In grayscale rendering you have fractional pixels.
2) In Windows the native OS resolution is 96 ppi, so some half-pixel sizes will have their own bitmaps. Specifically, 10 point rounds to 13 PPEM, 11 point to 15 PPEM, and 10.5 point to 14 PPEM. Since 96/72 is 4/3, one out of every three half-pixel sizes will have its own bitmap.

hhp

Huh? You lost me Hrant. What’s a PPEM? Pixel per em? Grayscale rendering?

When a resolution is different than 72dpi (like in Windows) it’s clearer to talk about PPEM: “points per em”, which is the number of pixels from top to bottom. At 96dpi for example, a “12 point” font is 16 pixels high.

hhp

ah…but we’re not talking about points at all…just pixels.

I’m confused as to how a font spec’ed at 10.5 would render since the pixel is pretty much the smallest unit available on the screen (with the noted exception of sub-pixel rendering things like clear-type which aren’t really applicable in this case)

> how a font spec’ed at 10.5 would render

It would render as 14 PPEM because Karen is in fact talking about 10.5 points (right Karen?), not 10.5 PPEM.

hhp

I prefer Trebuchet at 10 points (Strangely in the windows appearances window, the same size is listed as 8) and Georgia at 10. Both at the 96 dpi default of windows, and both with cleartype on.

Hrant — in what I assume was a slip, you wrote that PPEM is “points per em”, which makes no sense because a 14 point font will always be 14 points per em, by definition. Of course ppem = pixels per em. TrueType font technicians use this pixel measurement all the time, and don’t think in real-world units such as points or millimetres. When an application requests a particular point size (and implicitly also a zoom & resolution specification), the font returned is mapped to the closest ppem size.

If you want to examine the actual pixel-tuned ppem sizes in fonts, a nice trick in MS Word is to set the zoom to 75%. Since 72 is 75% of 96, the point size setting will now exactly equal the ppem setting. Set some lines in consecutive point sizes, and you’ll see how the font behaves at all low resolutions. Use Ctrl-[ and Ctrl-] to whizz up & down sizes in selected text.

Karen used the unit ‘px’ which is pixels. But maybe she did mean pt, which would make more sense.

I’m admittedly dwelling on a fairly minute issue ;o)

I would say Verdana, except for one character combination that trips me up: cl, which I often read as d.

Is this just me, or do other people run into this problem?

> cl, which I often read as d.

It’s not really Verdana’s fault. The alphabet needs work.

hhp

I did mean px, but maybe I’m just confused. I was quite sure that it looks different on the two platforms though. But it could also be the monitor resolution.

Still digesting the information on ppem.

I once learned that, roughly, very roughly, you could divide bodytext in two categories, namely literary and corporate/study text… and thus to be printed in literary serif and corporate sans-serif…

how do the typographers feel about that concerning font use on the web?

not an original question, but I am just curious, also since I automatically alway go for the sans-serif — maybe I’m just scared!