What Font Does Windows 10 Use

[Rosalie Checca]

Ifyou create a template named Blank.sta and store it in the Libraries:Defaults:Templates folder of either the Application folder or your User Folder it will be use any time you create a new blank document.

I have not find a solution, but it probably goes around the windows theme font and so on, I think Vectorworks or any software are "piggy backing" the windows for the font information. I will try and do more research on this.

Thanks for this. My desire is go a bit deeper. I want to change all tags, callouts, etc... from Arial to my clients desired font. Any way to do this? Currently I'm bringing in the tags and editing the style but this is painful.

My challenge is that I've run the script, changed the fonts (yeah!) and saved the file. I have run into a couple of issues. First: Using the data tag tool with a tag from the same group but of a different configuration it changes all existing tags back to Arial. Second: Once I placed all needed tags, saved the file, created the template and created a new file using the template the tags still use Arial. I want to change the font at the base level so with each new drawing users don't have to run the script. Is this even possible?

Also note, that you will need to pull all the data tag styles you want into the template and use them from there. The ones in the Default Contact in the application folder will likely revert to Arial even time VW is reinstalled (and maybe updated).

Fonts are pretty much an OS thing. I don't know if you could delete Arial from their computer and rename their font to Arial. Arial is so commonly used that this would likely cause all sorts of other problems so I don't recommend even testing it.

You could duplicate the Default Content file that contains the Tags into their Workgroup or User folders and edit the tags in there. If a file with the exact same name exists in the User or Workgroup and Applications folder, the once "closest" to the user takes priority and you will not see default content from the other folders. This would get you by until they upgrade to VW2023 and then you probably will have to do it all again. But this is probably the best option for now.

I'm doing all graphic design in a startup company of some friends, and a major part of our product is developing an app that should run on everything after iPhone 4. So after some researching (I have basically zero UI design experience) I figured we should use the San Francisco font for the app.

I managed to get the font from other sources, installed it, but it doesn't appear in either PS or AI. I also installed it on a different PC with a different Adobe CS version but that didn't work either.

Here are all the fonts you need. BUT, for some reason, at least in my case, if I install the italics I can not choose the regular font in an application.I don't know why and haven't tried anything like renaming or such because I just found all of this.Which is thy I have not installed the italics at the moment. But the rest works just fine.

Unfortunately Apple aren't too concerned with Windows users. They expect everyone who is designing for Mac to use a Mac. And since the San Francisco font has been created with specific features only available for Mac it is only available on Mac and unlikely to be available on Windows any time soon (unless someone decides to hack it, which is a possibility).

As you can see, San Francisco is very similar to Helvetica in shape, but possibly closer to Roboto in proportions and FF DIN in weight... Wether any of that matters much to you is obviously up to you. Personally I'd just stick with Helvetica.

One way you can change the style of a document is by adding a new text font. To add a font to Word, download and install the font in Windows, where it will become available to all Microsoft 365 applications.

All fonts are stored in the C:\Windows\Fonts folder. Optionally, you can add fonts by simply dragging font files from the extracted files folder into this folder. Windows will then automatically install them. To see what a font looks like, open the Fonts folder, right-click the font file, then select Preview.

I often have very limited space when creating reports and dashboards for users. I usually use Arial, or Arial Narrow, but UI isn't my area of expertise, so I want to know, how do you determine an optimal font for fitting the most readable text in the smallest space?

I did a rudimentary by creating a program that iterated through all of the available fonts I had installed on my Windows box at the time and printed a line containing each printable ascii character on to the screen in each of these font's. I repeated the test as well with different font sizes.

The results as I recall them were that Segoe UI and Tahoma were the best with respect to space utilization and readability for UI purposes at 10pt and 9pt sizes. In the short term we settled on Tahoma since Segoe UI isn't freely available for operating systems below Windows Vista. If you don't need to support Windows XP or older an Windows OS or other a non Windows OS then I would definitely go with Segoe UI otherwise I would go with Tahoma if it's available and if all else fails try Verdana. See this list for a lineup of available Windows fonts as well as information about the best of use of each.

Keep in mind as well that starting with Windows Vista I believe, Microsoft now recommends using a 9pt font instead of a 10pt font for UI elements since the Sego UI font displays much clearer than other fonts at low resolutions especially on flat panel displays.

Depending on what platform you are developing for, you may also want to look at modifying font metrics if possible. In .NET with WPF I recall there being quite a bit of ways to modify how the text is rendered to allow for condensing the space between characters and to make the individual characters more narrow. Using this type of technique you can stick with whatever font you like and just tweak it's rendering to get the results you need.

With regard to your specific example graph that you provided: for this particular graph I would recommend pivoting it so the text most likely to be read is horizontal for more natural reading. I would also place the number so that it is inside the each bar of the bar graph when it will fit with a color that stands out against whatever background color is there thus increasing the space for other things such as the labels. Laying out the bar graph as rows would make it easier to read and also to print on multiple pages if necessary. If a row layout is not possible then creating a separate key for each item in the graph would probably be reasonable and that way each bar could be place closer together as well to save space. The key would allow each bar to be labeled such as A, B, C... or 01, 02, 03... for example and the key (layed out in rows somewhere else) would give more detailed information about each.

Remember, a chart or diagram is mainly useful for getting quick visual information. If it becomes too much of a burden to the user/reader your probably best off simplifying it, consolidating some of the details of the chart, or just provide more raw data in a more tabular form.

Update: I've added another comparison below which shows a more complete listing of common characters including capital and lower case letters in each of the previously mentioned fonts with the addition of Verdana and MS Sans Serif (default UI font in Windows prior to Windows 2000). Unfortunately and in response to bobsoap's recommendation for using Verdana, it is pretty clear that Verdana is about the worst compared to the other fonts at 9pt although keep in mind that this may not hold true for other point sizes. Also size isn't necessarily always the most important detail, sometimes it's more important that a font is readable at small sizes than whether it is more compact relative to another font.

Generally, there's an "other way". The answers to this question are all great, but honestly, you should look at all the different option. Squeezing as much text in as little space as possible always means you've botched a previous design choice.

There are so many options, make sure you use the right one. Squeezing as much information into a single small area as possible is always the wrong way to go. Information needs space to breathe, to be readable, to be scannable and recognizable.

Yes, this generally means using way more space. But that's not a bad thing. It will take less effort for the person who consumes the data to quickly scan a couple of pages filled with well-structured information, than to figure out what that one bar means on that one-page-report. Think of the old board member, pocketing his reading glasses while passing the paper to the person next to him: "I can't read this - what does it say?"

There are assumptions in this question, the biggest one being that the "correct solution" to this UX issue is small text. But it's not. Small text becomes unreadable, an issue aggravated by tablets and other mobile devices. What if your user has bad eyesight? What if it's shown on an older, lower resolution monitor? What if there's glare from the sun or a light? So many reasons why small text can be unreadable.

Sometimes a smaller font is a good way out of a tight spot. In this particular case, at least for the part of the problem shown, there is a better solution which is both clearer, and takes half the space, like so:

Many fonts have been explicitly designed for use on computer screens (generally referred to as screen fonts). Matthew Carter's set of typefaces; Verdana, Tahoma, Georgia et al are great examples; they were designed from the outset with the pixel grid in mind. That makes them inherently good for use at smaller sizes (but generally makes them look a bit awkward in print).

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