Verdana

[Tim W]

I am making a site for a small business. They already have a logo and
letterhead which uses Verdana, so I should use it on the site really.

A quick web search to get the right font-family declarations threw up:

1 statements that Verdana is designed for onscreen use and is totally
readable and suitable.
2 statements that Verdana is no good as a web font because of size
issues eg it is bigger than most fonts
3 advice to not mix it with other fonts
4 advice to mix it with other fonts using it say, only for headings but
not for paras

As usual we struggle in the deluge of poor quality information off of
the internet. What are the problems with Verdana in practice?

Tim w

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-08-24 12:26, Tim W wrote:

> I am making a site for a small business. They already have a logo and
> letterhead which uses Verdana, so I should use it on the site really.

A logo that uses Verdana? Not very imaginative. A logo is a specific
typographic form of a name or an abbreviation. How specific can Verdana be?

Just because a logo and a letterhead use Verdana doesn't mean that copy
text needs to use it.

> A quick web search to get the right font-family declarations threw up:
>
> 1 statements that Verdana is designed for onscreen use and is totally
> readable and suitable.

The first part is correct. The second part is partly subjective, partly
technology-dependent. Perhaps most importantly, Verdana looks good in
some sizes only.

> 2 statements that Verdana is no good as a web font because of size
> issues eg it is bigger than most fonts

That's basically correct.

> 3 advice to not mix it with other fonts

Debatable. Large-size Verdana in headings could be mixed with just about
anything.

> 4 advice to mix it with other fonts using it say, only for headings
> but not for paras

Yeah.

> As usual we struggle in the deluge of poor quality information off of
> the internet. What are the problems with Verdana in practice?

It wins virtually nothing in comparison with Arial. So how many
disadvantages you need?

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[dorayme]

In article <k17hbm$82f$2...@dont-email.me>,

Tim W <tim....@mtavirgin.net> wrote:

> I am making a site for a small business. They already have a logo and
> letterhead which uses Verdana, so I should use it on the site really.
>
> A quick web search to get the right font-family declarations threw up:
>
> 1 statements that Verdana is designed for onscreen use and is totally
> readable and suitable.
> 2 statements that Verdana is no good as a web font because of size
> issues eg it is bigger than most fonts

If you need to use Verdana for a heading, go ahead. There are no
disasters awaiting you. The problems come mainly with body text. There
is no end to past discussions. Many come to mind.

<http://sbpoley.home.xs4all.nl/webmatters/verdana.html>

It is very readable and appealing enough in small screen print, there
is more spacing between the letters than many other fonts.

--
dorayme

[Jonathan N. Little]

As others have said, the "crime" is using it and then compensating for
Verdana oversize appearance by doing:


body {
font-size: 75%; ...

because if the user does not have Verdana on their system that have to
deal with a page with microfont. A page can still be read if the font is
larger, but the reverse is not always true! I suggest selecting fonts
that are similar in appearance when selecting alternatives and ones most
users are most likely to have installed.

If downloadable fonts ever become standardize than maybe this issue will
be moot.


--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

[Andreas Prilop]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2012, Tim W wrote:

> What are the problems with Verdana in practice?

The main problem is something like

body {font-family: Verdana; font-size: 80%}

Do not specify a font-size for BODY or P.

--
In memoriam Alan J. Flavell
http://www.alanflavell.org.uk/charset/browsers-fonts.html

[Joy Beeson]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2012 18:22:09 +0200, Andreas Prilop
<prilo...@trashmail.net> wrote:

> Do not specify a font-size for BODY or P.

And whatever you do, don't let the site go live until you've clicked
ctl+ at least five times on each page.

Not everybody with money to spend has perfect eyesight. And not
everybody with perfect eyesight likes to hunch up close to the
monitor.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net

[dorayme]

In article <p8dg385o8102gbssa...@4ax.com>,

Joy Beeson <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:

> And whatever you do, don't let the site go live until you've clicked
> ctl+ at least five times on each page.

Don't forget the much sidelined ctrl-, some surprises can appear!

Anyway, there is a distinction between what happens when you zoom
under Zoom Text Only and when not under. It is amazing how often even
quite otherwise competent authors almost seem unaware of the
distinction. It is not a distinction that is evident in all browsers.

--
dorayme

[Alfred Molon]

In article <k17hbm$82f$2...@dont-email.me>, Tim W says...

> What are the problems with Verdana in practice?

I don't know. My site uses verdana.
--

Alfred Molon
http://www.molon.de - Photos of Asia, Africa and Europe

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Alfred Molon wrote:

> In article <k17hbm$82f$2...@dont-email.me>, Tim W says...
>> What are the problems with Verdana in practice?
>
> I don't know. My site uses verdana.

http://sbpoley.home.xs4all.nl/webmatters/verdana.html

Your site also forces a too-small-for-me font size. You should use
percentages for body and content fonts: 100 of them.

http://sbpoley.home.xs4all.nl/webmatters/fontsize.html

--
-bts
-This space for rent, but the price is high

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-09-09 20:06, Alfred Molon wrote:

> In article <k17hbm$82f$2...@dont-email.me>, Tim W says...
>> What are the problems with Verdana in practice?
>
> I don't know. My site uses verdana.

Your site http://www.molon.de/ is a good demonstration of the problems
of typical use of Verdana:
1) font set to small, fixed sizes (13px, 10px), obviusly because Verdana
looks bad in common default font sizes
2) too small line height (especially for overly long lines)
3) poor color contrast in light on dark texts (presumably caused by
author's wrong assumptions about Verdana as very readable)
4) paragraphs justified on both sides (though _this_ mistake might be
independent of Verdana).

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Alfred Molon]

In article <k2ikqh$r1n$1...@dont-email.me>, Jukka K. Korpela says...

> Your site http://www.molon.de/ is a good demonstration of the problems
> of typical use of Verdana:
> 1) font set to small, fixed sizes (13px, 10px), obviusly because Verdana
> looks bad in common default font sizes

It's as big as the fonts on most sites in the web. Most websites have a
font size smaller or as big as mine. A size larger than 13px would start
looking huge.

If you have doubts about this, I can post screenshots of the sites I
have open right now in my browser. You will see that no other site (of
those open in my browser) has a larger font. I'm using Firefox in
default mode (no fiddling with zoom levels or fonts).

> 2) too small line height (especially for overly long lines)

There is no line-height parameter in CSS (except for very few cases,
such as the headlines for instance). Can you be more specific and point
out where you think the line heights are too small?

> 3) poor color contrast in light on dark texts (presumably caused by
> author's wrong assumptions about Verdana as very readable)

Again please be more specific and explain where you see the poor colour
contrast? When my font was #fff I received complaints that the contrast
was too strong, so I set it to #ccc which is more pleasing for the eye.

> 4) paragraphs justified on both sides (though _this_ mistake might be
> independent of Verdana).

That's a design choice, not a mistake. Note that the paragraphs don't
consist of many lines, see for instance
http://www.molon.de/travelogues/Czech/2012/

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-09-09 22:15, Alfred Molon wrote:

> It's as big as the fonts on most sites in the web.

Most sites do foolish things, with fonts too.

>> 2) too small line height (especially for overly long lines)
>
> There is no line-height parameter in CSS

You mean you don't even try to set line height, thereby accepting
whatever is the default for Verdana. And it's too small, especially for
long lines.

> Again please be more specific and explain where you see the poor colour
> contrast? When my font was #fff I received complaints that the contrast
> was too strong,

That's because people did not understand why they are having problems.
This is understandable. But _authors_ should know better. Light-color
text on dark background for copy text is simply a bad idea with bad
consequences.

>> 4) paragraphs justified on both sides (though _this_ mistake might be
>> independent of Verdana).
>
> That's a design choice, not a mistake.

A wrong choice, thereby a mistake.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Alfred Molon]

Please be specific with your criticism. Broad statements unfortunately
do not help.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-09-09 22:52, Alfred Molon wrote:

> Please be specific with your criticism. Broad statements unfortunately
> do not help.

I am not giving you criticism; I am merely pointing out some of the
reasons why Verdana should not be used, illustrating them with your
site, which you presented as an example of Verdana use.

Criticism of web sites is seldom useful. People responsible for sites
usually strongly resist criticism - they may ask for criticism, but what
they really want is appraisal plus some minor fixes that they can
understand and implement without thinking much and without even
considering any real change of the design.

But people who are just planning sites can learn from other people's
mistakes, if they are pointed out strong enough. Admittedly, I was much
too smooth and soft here, as usual, but I was focusing on a relatively
isolated problem, Verdana.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[dorayme]

In article <MPG.2ab711cff...@news.supernews.com>,

Alfred Molon <alfred...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Please be specific with your criticism. Broad statements unfortunately
> do not help.

There is not a lot of merely continuous body text on your site (at a
casual glance) so the sky is not going to fall in if you use Verdana
and all your less than white on almost black and justify your text and
so on and so on. Your site is an interesting framework for showing
your pictures.

But my sympathies are with the comments made by others so far in the
thread in that they are saying what is a good idea or not a good idea
in general, what is good practice, what is not.

For what it is worth, and specifically, I generally have to click up
at least one notch of text size to feel comfortable noting points of
interest (not even continuous reading) on your pages. If the text was
#fff it would be better for me (given that black on white, my
favourite is not on offer). The more you grey the text on black, the
more the black seems to bleed into it, #ccc on almost #000 is really
simply too risky and probably based obn too small a sample of your
feedback.

btw:

body {background-color: #002; margin: 0;}
body, table, tr, th, td, p, blockquote, li, ul, div { font-size: 13px;
color: #ccc; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; }

The margin of zero on BODY as a separate listing is understandable but
why background colour, why not put this latter along with the
foreground colour in the comma separated listing? Good practice is to
put color and background-color in pairs.

Anyway, nice website, all in all, so don't worry too much.

--
dorayme

[Alfred Molon]

As a weakness of Verdana you have claimed that the font on my site is
too small. But the font on my site is in fact quite big.

You also claimed that the line height is too low, but when I asked you
to point out where you have seen the too low line height, you did not
answer my question.

It's impossible to conduct a discussion like this.

[dorayme]

In article <MPG.2ab7251e2...@news.supernews.com>,

Alfred Molon <alfred...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> As a weakness of Verdana you have claimed that the font on my site is
> too small. But the font on my site is in fact quite big.

I assume you are talking to one J.Korpela. I know his habits, this is
the time he goes down into his killfile and distributes coffee and
cakes to the inmates, he is soft that way, he often stops to have a
chat with some of them.

Anyway, while he is down there, one of the main criticisms of Verdana
is that it is a big font and authors therefore tend to set it smaller
for aesthetic purposes. When someone does not have that font, as you
have seen in this thread, a font that is more compact gets
substituted. But this more compact font is then reduced by your CSS
(which was aimed at Verdana) thus increasing the risk of being far too
small.

--
dorayme

[Alfred Molon]

In article <dorayme-0B1FA8...@news.albasani.net>, dorayme
says...

> There is not a lot of merely continuous body text on your site (at a
> casual glance) so the sky is not going to fall in if you use Verdana
> and all your less than white on almost black and justify your text and
> so on and so on. Your site is an interesting framework for showing
> your pictures.

Ok, so it's not too terrible if I use verdana... Note however that the
travelogues have more text (http://www.molon.de/travelogues/ ).

And regarding the interesting framework: a friend of mine switched a
year ago or so from a self-designed site to a wordpress-based one. He
cited as reasons that his focus is on photography and not web
programming. He is fully right, but his new wordpress-based site now
looks like one of those zillion other websites using wordpress. It has
lost its individuality.

> But my sympathies are with the comments made by others so far in the
> thread in that they are saying what is a good idea or not a good idea
> in general, what is good practice, what is not.
>
> For what it is worth, and specifically, I generally have to click up
> at least one notch of text size to feel comfortable noting points of
> interest (not even continuous reading) on your pages. If the text was
> #fff it would be better for me (given that black on white, my
> favourite is not on offer). The more you grey the text on black, the
> more the black seems to bleed into it, #ccc on almost #000 is really
> simply too risky and probably based obn too small a sample of your
> feedback.

Finally some more detailed feedback. I do understand your point - the
moment you start fiddling with the fonts, Verdana has a small problem.
However most people never ever touch their browser font settings.
As for #ccc or #fff for the text, I don't know. I got that feedback I
wrote about. So you would use #fff for the text?

> btw:
>
> body {background-color: #002; margin: 0;}
> body, table, tr, th, td, p, blockquote, li, ul, div { font-size: 13px;
> color: #ccc; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; }
>
> The margin of zero on BODY as a separate listing is understandable but
> why background colour, why not put this latter along with the
> foreground colour in the comma separated listing? Good practice is to
> put color and background-color in pairs.

You are probably right here. That CSS sheet grew over time and initially
I knew very little about CSS. It could be a good idea to color and
background-color in pairs as you suggest.

[Alfred Molon]

In article <timstreater-131E...@news.individual.net>, Tim
Streater says...
> Personally I dislike light text on a dark background.

Indeed a light background is more suitable for text. I'm using a dark
background because images look better on a dark background.

[Alfred Molon]

In article <dorayme-2A3BBE...@news.albasani.net>, dorayme
says...

> Anyway, while he is down there, one of the main criticisms of Verdana
> is that it is a big font and authors therefore tend to set it smaller
> for aesthetic purposes. When someone does not have that font, as you
> have seen in this thread, a font that is more compact gets
> substituted. But this more compact font is then reduced by your CSS
> (which was aimed at Verdana) thus increasing the risk of being far too
> small.

I know the argument, but I remember a statistic showing that 95% or 99%
of all web surfers have Verdana. I could dig out the link if you are
interested.

Given the wide availability of Verdana there are only problems with this
font if somebody changes the default font settings on his browser. I
have no statistics for this, but I guess the percentage of people who do
so is negligibly small.

For all that matters, for the overwhelming majority of web surfers
Verdana is not a problem.

[Jonathan N. Little]

Alfred Molon wrote:
> As a weakness of Verdana you have claimed that the font on my site is
> too small. But the font on my site is in fact quite big.

What you seem not to understand is the font is "quite big" for *you*
because *you* have the oversize Verdana installed on your system. So
when your compensate bay making less than 100% it looks just right for
*you.* But if a visitor does not have Verdana installed on their
system, then the non-oversize font will also be reduced and then be too
small for *them.* It is not like you can fork:

Got Verdana?
Then body { font-size: 80%; }
else
body { font-size: 100%; }

Cannot do this in CSS

[dorayme]

In article <MPG.2ab72e9f2...@news.supernews.com>,

Alfred Molon <alfred...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> In article <dorayme-0B1FA8...@news.albasani.net>, dorayme
> says...
>
> > There is not a lot of merely continuous body text on your site (at a
> > casual glance) so the sky is not going to fall in if you use Verdana
> > and all your less than white on almost black and justify your text and
> > so on and so on. Your site is an interesting framework for showing
> > your pictures.
>
> Ok, so it's not too terrible if I use verdana... Note however that the
> travelogues have more text (http://www.molon.de/travelogues/ ).
>
> And regarding the interesting framework: a friend of mine switched a
> year ago or so from a self-designed site to a wordpress-based one. He
> cited as reasons that his focus is on photography and not web
> programming. He is fully right, but his new wordpress-based site now
> looks like one of those zillion other websites using wordpress. It has
> lost its individuality.
>

I understand. But even with content management sites, if you put in
the hard yards, you can get an individual look. The temptation not to
is great though with these sites!

...

> > For what it is worth, and specifically, I generally have to click up
> > at least one notch of text size to feel comfortable noting points of
> > interest (not even continuous reading) on your pages. If the text was
> > #fff it would be better for me (given that black on white, my
> > favourite is not on offer). The more you grey the text on black, the
> > more the black seems to bleed into it, #ccc on almost #000 is really

> > simply too risky and probably based on too small a sample of your

> > feedback.
>
> Finally some more detailed feedback. I do understand your point - the
> moment you start fiddling with the fonts, Verdana has a small problem.
> However most people never ever touch their browser font settings.
> As for #ccc or #fff for the text, I don't know. I got that feedback I
> wrote about. So you would use #fff for the text?
>

No question about it, yes! I would be unlikely to use black background
for so much text, but that is another issue. It is more undersatndable
on a photographic site.

--
dorayme

[dorayme]

In article <MPG.2ab737c97...@news.supernews.com>,

It might even be the case that the sort of people who don't have
Verdana are the geeky sort that would not know a good picture from an
ear of corn! <g>

Still, given that there are some problems and for some people, there
are a lot of other fonts that look nice that do not have these
problems. Up to you.

--
dorayme

[Alfred Molon]

In article <k2j97m$po3$1...@dont-email.me>, Jonathan N. Little says...

> What you seem not to understand is the font is "quite big" for *you*
> because *you* have the oversize Verdana installed on your system.

Over 95% of people have Verdana:
http://www.redalto.com.au/support/web_safe_fonts_in_website_design.html
(on Windows systems > 99%)

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 02:44:23 +0200, Alfred Molon
<alfred...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>In article <k2j97m$po3$1...@dont-email.me>, Jonathan N. Little says...
>
>> What you seem not to understand is the font is "quite big" for *you*
>> because *you* have the oversize Verdana installed on your system.
>
>Over 95% of people have Verdana:
>http://www.redalto.com.au/support/web_safe_fonts_in_website_design.html
>(on Windows systems > 99%)

So go ahead and do it wrong and lose up to 5%. What percentage
is lost by your other mistakes?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Alfred Molon wrote:

> In article <k2j97m$po3$1...@dont-email.me>, Jonathan N. Little says...
>
>> What you seem not to understand is the font is "quite big" for *you*
>> because *you* have the oversize Verdana installed on your system.
>
> Over 95% of people have Verdana:
> http://www.redalto.com.au/support/web_safe_fonts_in_website_design.html
> (on Windows systems > 99%)

Sometimes I wonder how 'they' know that. What code do they use to find out
what fonts are installed on my computer? I've certainly never told anyone
what I chose to install, or not install, or delete...

BTW, your cited 'reference' is another hard-to-read site like yours. It
has a tiny grey font on white. Poor contrast. I had to press Ctrl-Plus
three times so I could read it. See its CSS:

body{
font-family:Arial, sans-serif;
font-size:11px;
color:#1f3a51;

[Alfred Molon]

In article <k2jj02$3lb$1...@dont-email.me>, Beauregard T. Shagnasty says...

> I had to press Ctrl-Plus
> three times so I could read it.

I had no problems reading it. Probably age plays a role, i.e. at a
certain age people are unable to read small text, but then there are
reading glasses for this problem.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-09-10 2:36, Jonathan N. Little wrote:

> It is not like you can fork:
>
> Got Verdana?
> Then body { font-size: 80%; }
> else
> body { font-size: 100%; }
>
> Cannot do this in CSS

Ehem, in a sense, you can... The font-size-adjust property was designed
(largely) for reasons like this. It was present in CSS 2.0, dropped from
CSS 2.1, now resurrecting in CSS3 - as even more abstract:
file:///C:/Users/Jukka/Documents/CSS3/font-size-adjust.html

It's a bit tricky conceptually, and implementations have issues. If you set

font-size-adjust: 0.545

(using a value that appears to be the x-height ratio of Verdana
according to the most reliable studies [like mine]), then a browser
should behave so that text in Verdana is not affected and text in other
fonts gets size-adjusted (normally upwards) with a factor determined by
their x-height rations.

But among commonly used browsers, only Firefox supports
font-size-adjust. And using the code above, it size-adjusts Verdana,
too, so it probably has a wrong idea of its x-height. Worse still, it
adjusts it downwards.

My suspicions were confirmed when I look at
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/font-size-adjust
where the value of 0.58 is used (it was mentioned as an example in the
CSS 2.0 spec, and it is simply wrong).

So in a sense you can. Allow 8 years for browsers to catch up (including
the fix to Firefox, which might be the hardest part).

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[dorayme]

In article <slrnk4qvt7....@mbp55.local>,
Lewis <g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:

> In message <MPG.2ab7092f2...@news.supernews.com>

> Alfred Molon <alfred...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > In article <k2ikqh$r1n$1...@dont-email.me>, Jukka K. Korpela says...
>
> >> Your site http://www.molon.de/ is a good demonstration of the problems
> >> of typical use of Verdana:
> >> 1) font set to small, fixed sizes (13px, 10px), obviusly because Verdana
> >> looks bad in common default font sizes
>
> > It's as big as the fonts on most sites in the web. Most websites have a
> > font size smaller or as big as mine. A size larger than 13px would start
> > looking huge.
>

> You should *never* specify fonts in absolute sizes. Period. You are
> simply being hostile to your potential viewers. The fact that other
> webmonkeys are fucking morons is not an excuse.

It is simply not true that you should *never* do this these days.
There are circumstances where it will do no harm and you will not be
being hostile to anyone.

--
dorayme

[Tim W]

On 10/09/2012 06:50, Lewis wrote:

>
> You should *never* specify fonts in absolute sizes. Period. You are
> simply being hostile to your potential viewers. The fact that other
> webmonkeys are fucking morons is not an excuse.
>

This is a bit absurd. It isn't hostile. If you are publishing something
you make decisions on how to make it accessible to which people
according to your own interests and abilities. If I choose to publish on
paper and photocopy it I can, If I choose not to have my website
translated into spanish then that's my decision as it would be if I say
I can't be bothered with IE users or people who for some inexplicable
reason want to zoom just the text and not the whole lovely page as one
as i designed it. That's just my perogative.

Tim W

[Tim W]

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Alfred Molon wrote:

> Beauregard T. Shagnasty says...
>> I had to press Ctrl-Plus three times so I could read it.

>> [your Verdana numbers reference site]

>
> I had no problems reading it. Probably age plays a role, i.e. at a
> certain age people are unable to read small text, but then there are
> reading glasses for this problem.

Then we can assume you don't care about us visitors "of a certain age."
BTW, my glasses give me a measured and tested 20/20 vision.

You have beautiful photographs on your site, but I can't say much about
your choice of font and size.

[Jonathan N. Little]

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> 2012-09-10 2:36, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>
>> It is not like you can fork:
>>
>> Got Verdana?
>> Then body { font-size: 80%; }
>> else
>> body { font-size: 100%; }
>>
>> Cannot do this in CSS
>
> Ehem, in a sense, you can... The font-size-adjust property was designed
> (largely) for reasons like this. It was present in CSS 2.0, dropped from
> CSS 2.1, now resurrecting in CSS3 - as even more abstract:
> file:///C:/Users/Jukka/Documents/CSS3/font-size-adjust.html

Gotcha! Better to point to an example online ;-)

>
> It's a bit tricky conceptually, and implementations have issues. If you set
>
> font-size-adjust: 0.545
>
> (using a value that appears to be the x-height ratio of Verdana
> according to the most reliable studies [like mine]), then a browser
> should behave so that text in Verdana is not affected and text in other
> fonts gets size-adjusted (normally upwards) with a factor determined by
> their x-height rations.
>
> But among commonly used browsers, only Firefox supports
> font-size-adjust. And using the code above, it size-adjusts Verdana,
> too, so it probably has a wrong idea of its x-height. Worse still, it
> adjusts it downwards.
>
> My suspicions were confirmed when I look at
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/font-size-adjust
> where the value of 0.58 is used (it was mentioned as an example in the
> CSS 2.0 spec, and it is simply wrong).
>
> So in a sense you can. Allow 8 years for browsers to catch up (including
> the fix to Firefox, which might be the hardest part).
>

Interesting! Learn something but still technically I am still correct.

[Jonathan N. Little]

Alfred Molon wrote:
> In article <k2jj02$3lb$1...@dont-email.me>, Beauregard T. Shagnasty says...
>> I had to press Ctrl-Plus
>> three times so I could read it.
>
> I had no problems reading it. Probably age plays a role, i.e. at a
> certain age people are unable to read small text, but then there are
> reading glasses for this problem.
>

You seem to miss the point. If you when scale the text size down for the
over-sized Verdana, but the user only has the normal-sized fonts on
their system then the text is even smaller!

It is like trying to get one-sized uniform to fit on your celebrity
basketball team of George Stephanopoulos, Ryan Seacrest, Jon Stewart,
Paul Reubens, and Shaq O'Neal!

[Allodoxaphobia]

On Sun, 9 Sep 2012 19:06:41 +0200, Alfred Molon wrote:
> In article <k17hbm$82f$2...@dont-email.me>, Tim W says...
>> What are the problems with Verdana in practice?
>
> I don't know. My site uses verdana.

hrrrumph.. Your site may _specify_ Verdana, but my _browser_ pretty
much functions as _I_ see fit.

Jonesy

[Ed Mullen]

Well, I, for one, detest image zooming and have it turned off in all my
browsers. If I'm zooming it's because the site author has set a
too-small font size, not because the images are too small.


--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/
Why can we shop in a store but we can't store in a shop? But, we can
shop in a market and market in a shop!

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-09-10 17:06, Jonathan N. Little wrote:

>> file:///C:/Users/Jukka/Documents/CSS3/font-size-adjust.html
>
> Gotcha! Better to point to an example online ;-)

D'oh! Happens to me every millennium! And I wasn't even trying to point
to my test page (its address had just crept into my clipboard) but to
the CSS3 Fonts draft on font-size-adjust:
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-fonts/#font-size-adjust-prop

In addition to the practical considerations, which make the property
questionable, or maybe worse than useless, there's a theoretical note to
be made. The property revolves around the "aspect value", or "aspect
ratio" in more common parlance, i.e. the x-height of the font divided by
the font size. This means that we consider the relative height of
lowercase letters without ascenders or descenders. But that's not all!
What about those ascenders or descenders, about uppercase letters, and
about diacritic marks, which are frequent in many languages (Finnish,
French, Vietnamese for example)? They also affect the "real", visual
size of a font, as compared with the font-size property.

This reminds me of my favorite example about Verdana and line height:
set the font to Verdana, do not set line-height at all (i.e. let
browsers use their default for Verdana), and test with some text
containing loads of "g" and "�". You will see how the "g" brutally
attacks the ring of "�" on a line below it.

Of course, many other combinations of a letter with a descender and an
uppercase letter with a diacritic mark create similar effects, if you
default line-height when using Verdana. It's just so that "�" is one of
my favorite letters, and a very common letter in my third-best language
Swedish, and a typographer's nightmare. It is virtually impossible to
design "�" properly, but a font like Verdana has failed in a
particularly serious manner. It uses such a large part of the font
height for uppercase letters that any diacritic above them is bound to
cause damage, to the letter.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:24:45 +0100, Tim W <tim....@mtavirgin.net>
wrote:

It is also hostile.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[Alfred Molon]

In article <k2kiu1$ojb$1...@dont-email.me>, Beauregard T. Shagnasty says...

> BTW, my glasses give me a measured and tested 20/20 vision.

Then why were you unable to read that page without zooming?

[Alfred Molon]

In article <k2ksqf$o67$1...@dont-email.me>, Jonathan N. Little says...

> You seem to miss the point. If you when scale the text size down for the
> over-sized Verdana, but the user only has the normal-sized fonts on
> their system then the text is even smaller!

Less than 1% of users don't have Verdana... (all Windows and Mac users
have it, only 33% of Linux users don't; Linux is used by just 2% of all
users).

Those Linux users who don't have verdana could install it on their
systems, which would make sense given that verdana is widely used in the
web.

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 19:04:29 +0200, Alfred Molon
<alfred...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>In article <k2kiu1$ojb$1...@dont-email.me>, Beauregard T. Shagnasty says...
>
>> BTW, my glasses give me a measured and tested 20/20 vision.
>
>Then why were you unable to read that page without zooming?

Have you read what he has been saying about Verdana?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 19:09:10 +0200, Alfred Molon
<alfred...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>In article <k2ksqf$o67$1...@dont-email.me>, Jonathan N. Little says...
>> You seem to miss the point. If you when scale the text size down for the
>> over-sized Verdana, but the user only has the normal-sized fonts on
>> their system then the text is even smaller!
>
>Less than 1% of users don't have Verdana... (all Windows and Mac users
>have it, only 33% of Linux users don't; Linux is used by just 2% of all
>users).
>
>Those Linux users who don't have verdana could install it on their
>systems, which would make sense given that verdana is widely used in the
>web.

It is probably easier to skip your Website. After all, it is not
as if there is a shortage of Websites to view.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[Jonathan N. Little]

Alfred Molon wrote:
> In article <k2ksqf$o67$1...@dont-email.me>, Jonathan N. Little says...
>> You seem to miss the point. If you when scale the text size down for the
>> over-sized Verdana, but the user only has the normal-sized fonts on
>> their system then the text is even smaller!
>
> Less than 1% of users don't have Verdana...

How do you know that?

> (all Windows and Mac users
> have it, only 33% of Linux users don't; Linux is used by just 2% of all
> users).

And how do you know that?

>
> Those Linux users who don't have verdana could install it on their
> systems, which would make sense given that verdana is widely used in the
> web.
>

You'll go far in web design with that approach. Unless I have a dying
need for the information on a website, if it not comfortable to read for
whatever reason, I move on...plenty others out there.

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Gene Wirchenko wrote:

> Alfred Molon wrote:
>> Beauregard T. Shagnasty says...
>>> BTW, my glasses give me a measured and tested 20/20 vision.
>>
>> Then why were you unable to read that page without zooming?
>
> Have you read what he has been saying about Verdana?

..which would be, I don't have it so I see his off-white-on-blue text at
about 75% of what *he* sees it at.

Alfred doesn't understand any of this. I guess we'll just let him stew in
his own juices, offending people with his hard-to-read website.

[Alfred Molon]

In article <k2l7pu$on$1...@dont-email.me>, Jonathan N. Little says...

> And how do you know that?

See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana#Prevalence
"the availability of Verdana is 99.70% on Windows, 98.05% on computers
running Mac OS, and 67.91% on free operating systems like Linux."

and

http://www.netmarketshare.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=9
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
or
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/01/is-linux-marketshare-on-the-rise-it-
seems-so

Different stats, but all indicate that Linux has even less than 2%
market share.

[Jonathan N. Little]

Alfred Molon wrote:

> Different stats, but all indicate that Linux has even less than 2%
> market share.

And since Linux is not sold these state are firm because...?

I have currently have 6 systems here listed that would be listed a
"Windows" since they where sold with Windows installed, but only 1, the
one I am typing on has Windows running. But that is not the point. In
web design when people click you have about 5 seconds to "invite them
in". If they are not hooked, ans especially as a result of
accessibility--poof! They are gone. Look at your web specs for session
times.

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Jonathan N. Little wrote:

> Alfred Molon wrote:
>> Different stats, but all indicate that Linux has even less than 2%
>> market share.
>
> And since Linux is not sold these state are firm because...?

Every time I see a stat that says "Linux users are NN%" I have to laugh.
There is no way to tell. I can download one copy of, say, the Ubuntu .iso
file and install it on ten dozen computers, overwriting the Windows that
came with them. No way will anyone ever count those PCs as Linux PCs.

But! They will *all* be counted as *Windows* PCs because they were sold
with it.

Oh, and none of those ten dozen PCs will have Verdana on them...

[Jonathan N. Little]

But that *had* Verdana on once so that counts, right? ;-)

[Alfred Molon]

In article <k2lf7h$j2c$1...@dont-email.me>, Jonathan N. Little says...

> And since Linux is not sold these state are firm because...?

I even posted a link of a Ubuntu fan club page titled "Linux Marketshare
is Rising". That page shows slightly above 1% market share for Linux,
i.e. the number of people who don't have Verdana is negligibly small.
There are probably more people using IE6.

> I have currently have 6 systems here listed that would be listed a
> "Windows" since they where sold with Windows installed, but only 1, the
> one I am typing on has Windows running. But that is not the point. In
> web design when people click you have about 5 seconds to "invite them
> in". If they are not hooked, ans especially as a result of
> accessibility--poof! They are gone. Look at your web specs for session
> times.

Lots of sites, including very popular ones, are using Verdana and/or
fixed font sizes. And these sites look good. They only have problems
with the tiny minority of users who don't want to have Verdana installed
on their system. The question then becomes, why these users don't want
to have a widely used font installed on their computer.

Regarding the fixed font issue: on an image gallery site, the images
have a *fixed* size in pixel. On such a site it doesn't make sense to
have fonts with a variable size because the images have a fixed size
i.e. would not scale with the font. If the font is too small, the right
way to view such a site is to use the zoom function of the browser.

In a photo gallery site using a font (in the browser) other than that
chosen by the site designer does not make sense, because the proportions
and the look of the site will change.

[Alfred Molon]

In article <k2lfj5$fod$1...@dont-email.me>, Beauregard T. Shagnasty says...

> Every time I see a stat that says "Linux users are NN%" I have to laugh.
> There is no way to tell. I can download one copy of, say, the Ubuntu .iso
> file and install it on ten dozen computers, overwriting the Windows that
> came with them. No way will anyone ever count those PCs as Linux PCs.
>
> But! They will *all* be counted as *Windows* PCs because they were sold
> with it.

Then have a look at the usage statistics on Wikimedia which are based on
actual use:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

1.55% share for Linux, pretty much in line with the other data I posted.

> Oh, and none of those ten dozen PCs will have Verdana on them...

Why don't you install it?

[dorayme]

In article <MPG.2ab862d4d...@news.supernews.com>,

Alfred Molon <alfred...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Regarding the fixed font issue: on an image gallery site, the images
> have a *fixed* size in pixel. On such a site it doesn't make sense to
> have fonts with a variable size because the images have a fixed size
> i.e. would not scale with the font. If the font is too small, the right
> way to view such a site is to use the zoom function of the browser.
>
> In a photo gallery site using a font (in the browser) other than that
> chosen by the site designer does not make sense, because the proportions
> and the look of the site will change.

It is not inconsistent with that pictures on a site are bitmapped and
will stay the size that the author predicts that the text will be the
size he predicts. The fact that quite enough people need to zoom up or
down on individual pages or have private and unpredictable text sizes
set in their prefs/options guarantees that the text will vary in size
from computer to computer around the world. This fact is independent
of what font and size is suggested in the CSS.

And then there is the fact that most people these days probably don't
use Zoom Text Only, causing them to quite often see even pictures
zooming along with the text. Either because ZTO is not the default
setting in browsers or because it is just not an option.

While I am at it, I don't think your site is that bad in regard to
fonts and you are right, it won't kill those who need to up their text
size on a tactical basis. We who need to (I am one of them quite
often, depending on the time of the day and how much there is to read)
are *used* to doing this. But I disagree with you that a photographic
site or any site that has lots of pictures cannot be quite flexible
and fluid in the design and still good and true.

--
dorayme

[Jonathan N. Little]

Alfred Molon wrote:

> Why don't you install it?
>

In case you don't realize it it is not free:

<http://www.fonts.com/font/microsoft-corporation/verdana>

So if you install the half-dozen or so of MS's often-used-but-over-sized
fonts in websites it about $200...

Anyways nothing wrong with using Verdana just if you don't make the base
font size <100%. The problem that you either cannot grasp or just plain
ignoring is when you compensate for Verdana's over-sized appearance by
making the font size < 100% then normal sized fonts (the ones that will
be substituted if Verdana is not available) will be way too small.

[Alfred Molon]

In article <k2llic$skj$1...@dont-email.me>, Jonathan N. Little says...

> In case you don't realize it it is not free:
>
> <http://www.fonts.com/font/microsoft-corporation/verdana>

It seems to be still free or available for free:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web

Otherwise why would 67% of desktop Linux installations have it? I doubt
people paid $200.

[Alfred Molon]

In article <dorayme-7891BA...@news.albasani.net>, dorayme
says...

> But I disagree with you that a photographic
> site or any site that has lots of pictures cannot be quite flexible
> and fluid in the design and still good and true.

We discussed that this March if you remember and this example of fluid
design was made:
http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/lightboxdemo

But this fails with my thumbnail tables, where each tile can have a
different size, or let's say it would look ugly with lots of unused
space on the pages.
I wouldn't mind having a fluid design for my thumbnail tables, but the
technology is not sufficiently advanced yet (unless perhaps I read out
the screen size with Javascript and then serve pages designed to fit the
screen or window).

[Joy Beeson]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 08:30:52 +0200, Alfred Molon
<alfred...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I had no problems reading it.

Since you have made it plain that you don't want me to read what you
write, I have set a filter to make sure I don't inadvertently invade
your privacy.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net

[Gregor Kofler]

Am 2012-09-10 21:50, Alfred Molon meinte:

> Lots of sites, including very popular ones, are using Verdana

[..]
> And these sites look good

This doesn't compute.

Gregor