"Platform Problems with Fonts and Text"
by Azam Corry
In a previous article, I mentioned that it's important to know
how your pages will appear to surfers, so that you have more
control over your image. You should choose a sensible font that
most surfers will have installed on their system, and include at
least one other similar font as a back-up alternative in your
font tags or style sheet.
There's another factor you need to bear in mind when selecting
your preferred font sets: some fonts take up more room than
others because of slightly larger character size (height and
width), or wider letter-to-letter spacing (known as tracking).
For example, Verdana has wide character spacing. It is also
'tall' as is Geneva. Both occupy more space on the page than the
Arial font, which is just slighty larger than Helvetica.
Both Helvetica and Geneva are Mac fonts, and you should be
careful of the order you place them in your font tags. If you
specify Arial, followed by Geneva, like this:
<font face="Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif">
Then any Mac user that doesn't have Arial installed on their
system (admittedly fewer these days due to the popularity of
Explorer and Word) will see the considerably larger Geneva font,
instead of the similarly sized Helvetica.
This can lead to complications if you make extensive use of
tables. For example, consider the common left column navigation
bar found on many web pages. If this employs a table cell sized
to be an 'exact-fit' for text in the Arial font, it will also
display fine when viewed in Helvetica.
However if viewed in Geneva, it's larger footprint may cause
headings to break onto the line below (continue on the next
line), or stretch and distort the table. On the other hand, Mac
users need to bear in mind that sizing their tables to suit the
Geneva font, may lead to poor presentation for Windows users
viewing in Arial, with lots of empty space and an untidy
appearance.
Small Fonts and Macs
Windows users typically have a screen resolution of 96 dpi
(dots-per-inch), whilst Macs are usually at 72 dpi.
What does this mean?
It means that if you use very small text, a Mac user can't read
it - at all - it's too small! Text at any size will always appear
smaller on a Mac.
I use a Mac. I have been to so many sites which use text that,
even when set to largest in the browser, is far too small to read
comfortably. I used to hunch up to the screen to read when this
happened.
Now I seldom bother.
My experience has been that 90% of sites I come across that
suffer from this problem have nothing of value to offer me in
return for my trouble, so if the first sentence doesn't grab me,
I simply leave. If you're one of the 10% with worthwhile content
making this mistake - you're loosing out!
Surfers have so many choices that you can't afford not to cater
to as many as possible. Failing to do so not only reduces you're
own audience, it increases loyalty to your competitors!
Another reason to avoid small text size is that some search
engines (most notably Alta Vista) penalise pages with small text,
because they view them as an attempt to spam the engine.
© 1999-2000 Azam Corry "Do it Better. Do it Faster. Do it Right!"
Online since 1998, Azam Corry can help you succeed. No-Bull
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(756 words)
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