I'd be interested to find if anyone else found the study mentioned below a bit flawed in its method (http://www.message.uk.com/textprefs/).
In my opinion, going from top to bottom, there's too many variables to handle at once. I found it frustrating to change my column width, then the font size, then the line-height (which made me actually like a different font size), then to change the font, which seemed to wipe out my font size and line-height settings from before. Maybe it's just that the font I selected happens to handle line-height and font-size differently, but I found it rather distracting and I gave up rather than going back to fix the other settings again to work with the font. As happy as I was that someone was doing something to move beyond purely anecdotal evidence on the subject of screen font readability, the study itself was frustrating enough to create some flawed data (if users ever actual get to the point where they're ready to submit their data). My suggestion: one variable at a time, please. - Sterling ----- Original Message ---- From: Jeff Seager <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 11:37:56 AM Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] What's the right default font size for a website? I use 1em except when specifying Verdana, which reads well for most people at 0.8em. For what it's worth, I've seen several studies naming the most readable screen fonts as Verdana, Arial, Rockwell and Georgia. I still go with the old-school notion that serif fonts are easier to read on paper, so my print stylesheets usually set body copy in Georgia or Times New Roman at 10, 11 or 12 points. I see it as my job to make it possible for people to resize type, but I won't add redundant controls or alternative stylesheets to do so. Maybe I'm just stubborn, but I expect users to learn to use their tools. Looks like some comprehensive research on this topic is underway in the UK: http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4642.asp http://www.message.uk.com/textprefs/ When that study is complete, we should have a large enough sampling to give us more information about the broad spectrum of user preferences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32812 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
