I’m soon to begin crafting a web site for a high-end facial treatment company. Mostly, I’ve done corporate kinds of sites, and the new one presents me with some exciting possibilities in design.
But here’s a question given the high-resolution screens that are more and more prominent and make text appear so small that users have to squint or bump up the text size in their browsers (which I’ve learned few know how to do.) Anyway, my question: What do you think is basically an optimal body text size these days? I’ve been working with Verdana 12 on most sites, but am beginning to think Verdana 14 might actually be more desirable.
Thoughts? Any new wisdom on this that may have come about in recent years?
My new site, if it matters (and it no doubt does) primarily caters to an age group of about 40-55.
Thanks for any advise. This is the first time I’ll be attempting a full CSS layout and I’m hoping to do it right the first time around. (If wishes were fishes . . . )
This is the first time I’ll be attempting a full CSS layout and I’m hoping to do it right the first time around.
Personally I choose 12 but the main thing to remember is that if you create and name your styles properly and apply them consistently then it is an easy task to make site-wide style adjustments without rooting about in every page changing things individually.
I’m a fan of relative font sizes (though around here I think I’m in
the minority). You have to give up a small amount of pixel precision
for something that’s fluid and more accessible on older browsers with
regard to enlarging text (not zooming the entire page). It does take a
little extra work to get used to (it’s not plug-n-play simple like
pixel units) but it works just fine all the same.
Thoughts? Any new wisdom on this that may have come about in recent years?
My new site, if it matters (and it no doubt does) primarily caters to an age group of about 40-55.
If 14 seems better then go with 14. No new wisdom, although it is true that the average pixel density of displays has been increasing. And that age group is precisely the one that tends to have some developing eyesight problems but may not yet be dealing with it properly.
So, if your body style is set to say 75% it means that this is your base setting for that document.
To continue styling text in your document you could now set line-height tracking etc in your p-tag. And define other classes as well.
But there are other methodes thinkable, like styling your p-tag completely, including the size in %. So no body tag in the document.
Just try it out. And remember, you as a designer have -almost- no influence how your visitors see the page, just because of user preferences that might overrule your settings. That said, the majority never ever changes the default values because they do not know how…
Thanks for all who responded to this thread. My favorite turns out to be Dan J’s with his recommendation for “lucky 13px Helvetica.” I kind of like Verdana, but after reading this thread and considering my own situation, I think I’m moving to a compromise between Verdana 12 and 14, and like Dan, thinking 13 might just be the ticket.
Be sure you’ve checked the browser stats for your site, and looked at
the site in your most popular browser (might be some flavor of PC)
before committing to this.
You may be shocked to discover the leaky boat that is Windows
typography[1] and the dodgy cloned fonts (with incomplete kerning
pairs) that sail in it. Furthermore, Helvetica was never designed for
screen view (unlike Tahoma, Verdana, and even lowly Arial) and so it
tends to suffer really badly at text sizes, especially when confronted
by a perfect storm such as the aforementioned leaky boat (just to
mangle the metaphor a little more).
Thanks for all who responded to this thread. My favorite turns out
to be Dan J’s with his recommendation for “lucky 13px Helvetica.” I
kind of like Verdana, but after reading this thread and considering
my own situation, I think I’m moving to a compromise between Verdana
12 and 14, and like Dan, thinking 13 might just be the ticket.
Sigh. Maybe I’ll just stick with Verdana 12, unless, Walter, you’re advising against Helvetica 13 but okay with Verdana 13. Wasn’t quite clear on that.
Laura
On 22 Feb 2010, 1:17 pm, waltd wrote:
Be sure you’ve checked the browser stats for your site, and looked at
the site in your most popular browser (might be some flavor of PC)
before committing to this.
You may be shocked to discover the leaky boat that is Windows
typography[1] and the dodgy cloned fonts (with incomplete kerning
pairs) that sail in it. Furthermore, Helvetica was never designed for
screen view (unlike Tahoma, Verdana, and even lowly Arial) and so it
tends to suffer really badly at text sizes, especially when confronted
by a perfect storm such as the aforementioned leaky boat (just to
mangle the metaphor a little more).
Thanks for all who responded to this thread. My favorite turns out
to be Dan J’s with his recommendation for “lucky 13px Helvetica.” I
kind of like Verdana, but after reading this thread and considering
my own situation, I think I’m moving to a compromise between Verdana
12 and 14, and like Dan, thinking 13 might just be the ticket.
Furthermore, Helvetica was never designed for
screen view (unlike Tahoma, Verdana, and even lowly Arial) and so it
tends to suffer really badly at text sizes
This is a REALLY good point.
Ironically, this holds true to an extent for Times as well - the font that’s used as the default if no specific font instruction is supplied.
This has been a niggle of mine for a while and something that I’d
almost become blind to in Freeway. It’s simply a font set naming
oversight as the primary font isn’t Helvetica but, as you say, Arial.
Regards,
Tim.
On 22 Feb 2010, at 16:16, Helveticus wrote:
I’ve noticed that FW replaces Helvetica with Arial in the source
code. If you select Helvetica as your body text this is what’s in
the code
