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Fonts For Your Website
Is it
just a matter of Style?
The choice of font you use at your website can
be
affected by so many different elements: personal
taste, style, screen resolution and size, operating
system, monitor age, background and - not last -
readability and ease of use.
The most common font used for print and the Web
is Times New Roman. This is the default font of many
applications including most of the Microsoft Office
Suites. That is not to say it's the most readable or
comfortable font; on the contrary, Arial, Courier and
Verdana are considered more readable.
A study conducted at Wichita State University in
2002 titled:
A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which Size
and Type is Best? Found these amazing results:
Times New Roman was deemed the least preferred
font in 10 or 12 point size.
Arial was most preferred in the 12 point size and
Verdana was the most preferred in the 10 point
size.
Overall, Verdana was the most preferred font for
readability and ease of comprehension.
The fonts considered most legible are Arial, Courier
and Verdana.
As far as looks, Times New Roman and Georgia are
preferred over the others.
All the above appears to imply that for design choices,
like when a large font is used as a decoration, Times
New Roman or Georgia is the choice.
For general speed of reading and less strain on the
eyes it's Arial if using a small font.
Verdana was the choice for best compromise between
legibility and speed.
All the above should be included in the building plans for
your website since they can affect the looks of so many
items, such as: Headlines, header tags, choice of colors,
links, contrast and decoration.
You can compensate for many elements of styling by
using different fonts and sizes. For example, if you are
super imposing text upon a graphic perhaps it would be
best to make the font bigger to help the eye separate
the font from the image.
The same common sense approach can be used for the
body areas: use colors that will bring out the text and
make it easy for your visitors to read your website.
Don't use dark fonts on a dark background because they
are very hard to read.
Likewise, do your best to copy well established convention
by making the colors of your HTML links in standard colors
such as blue for unvisited, purple for visited and so on.
Overall, don't use more than 3 types of fonts on your
website and do your best to include the "Big Picture"
in your design. Show a few completed sketches to your
friends and family and ask their opinion. Revise and re-do
as often as needed.
As a time saving measure, make sure to use CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets) for your website design
because it allows you to change the font style of
a complete website by just changing the information
in the style sheet. A real time saver when you have
a 100 page website.
Above all, your website should have its own theme
and style. It should have text that invites the visitor
to explore more and be easy to read and understand.
The visual load on the eyes should be as little as
possible to prevent fatigue.
The general look should be one of integrated design
with user friendliness as its ultimate purpose.
by Francisco Aloy
(C)2004 Francisco Aloy - All Rights Reserved
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