Re: FN-FORUM: Junior Web Developer Position

date posted 18th March 2008 12:56

> True type is definitely on, helvetica looks even worse if it's off ;)

Not that then! Unless you need to run the ClearType tuner to tailor it to
your screen?

> Unfortunately you can't rely on people having it on, I think the problem
> might come from I have the true-type version installed.

TrueType is pretty much as good as you'll get on a PC. I _think_ OpenType
has some advantages, but you do need anti-aliasing, preferably sub-pixel
rendering, for any font to look smooth on screen.

> works and I'll test), but again you can't rely on people having the
> right font. So what's best, hope they have the right font version or not
> use it at all ?

For the site I was talking about, since the customer's PCs didn't have
ClearType on I decided to switch from Trebuchet back to Arial/Helvetica.

> I think verdana looks good on screen, if I get the choice I'd probably
> specify verdana,arial,sans-serif as the font choices.

The trouble with Verdana is that it's so much different in size to the
other fonts (for a given point size, etc.) so it doesn't play well with
the others.

> Just done a search and this page gives a bit of info on why helvetica
> looking terrible:
>
> http://brainstormsandraves.com/articles/typography/webfonts/

Yup, any font will look bad on screen without any anti-aliasing.

> and then this one saying it's good:
>
> http://www.sitepoint.com/article/anatomy-web-fonts

Helvetica/Arial has the advantage of being very old: thus available on
almost every computer: a Good Thing. But, being old, they don't have the
same glyph design specifically aimed at computer screens and sub-pixel
rendering (ClearType) that fonts like Trebuchet have.

Anthony
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