The verdana 'problem'.

M

Mike Barnard

Hi.

Yes, before you start saying this has been done to death, it has. But
for all my reading about it I have not found a conclusion, just a list
of percieved problems.

I have googled and gone back in this group to 2003 and found lots of
discussions saying where the problems are percieved to be, Lots of
examples posted, using browsers and statistics that are years old.
Looking at some very well done sites (to my untrained and I hope
unprejudiced mind) I still see verdana used in the css.

Without going into the same old discussions, my question is...

Am I correct in thinking that the main problem with verdana is only if
the page designer reduces the body size below 100%? (This reduces
other fonts if the user doesn't have verdana, yadda yadda.) Therefore,
if I use verdana but leave the body font at 100% there really is no
problem.

Right or wrong?

And, again without the looooooong discussions please, what sans serif
font families do you put in your sites as a general rule if you don't
do verdana?

Thanks.

<fx ducks from forthcoming abuse!>

Mike.
 
E

Els

Mike said:
Am I correct in thinking that the main problem with verdana is only if
the page designer reduces the body size below 100%? (This reduces
other fonts if the user doesn't have verdana, yadda yadda.) Therefore,
if I use verdana but leave the body font at 100% there really is no
problem.

Right or wrong?
Right.

And, again without the looooooong discussions please, what sans serif
font families do you put in your sites as a general rule if you don't
do verdana?

I don't use verdana anymore, but when I did, it was Arial, Helvetica,
and a Linux font that I don't remember the name of.

Welcome :)
<fx ducks from forthcoming abuse!>

You can duck, but you can't hide :p
 
E

Els

Els said:
I don't use verdana anymore, but when I did, it was Arial, Helvetica,
and a Linux font that I don't remember the name of.

Oops, misread the question. Read it as 'fall-back fonts'.
These days my favourite is "Trebuchet MS", with a fall-back to "Suse
Sans" and Verdana followed by Arial and Helvetica.
 
A

Adrian

Mike said:
Hi.

Yes, before you start saying this has been done to death, it has. But
for all my reading about it I have not found a conclusion, just a list
of percieved problems.

I have googled and gone back in this group to 2003 and found lots of
discussions saying where the problems are percieved to be, Lots of
examples posted, using browsers and statistics that are years old.
Looking at some very well done sites (to my untrained and I hope
unprejudiced mind) I still see verdana used in the css.

Without going into the same old discussions, my question is...

Am I correct in thinking that the main problem with verdana is only if
the page designer reduces the body size below 100%? (This reduces
other fonts if the user doesn't have verdana, yadda yadda.) Therefore,
if I use verdana but leave the body font at 100% there really is no
problem.

Right or wrong?

And, again without the looooooong discussions please, what sans serif
font families do you put in your sites as a general rule if you don't
do verdana?

Thanks.

<fx ducks from forthcoming abuse!>

Mike.

Why not concisely state your question?
 
M

mynameisnobodyodyssea

Yes, before you start saying this has been done to death, it has. But
for all my reading about it I have not found a conclusion, just a list
of percieved problems.

I presume you added to the list of fonts the generic sans-serif
font-family:verdana, sans-serif
(sorry, I do not know what the problem is.)
 
H

Harlan Messinger

Mike said:
Am I correct in thinking that the main problem with verdana is only if
the page designer reduces the body size below 100%? (This reduces
other fonts if the user doesn't have verdana, yadda yadda.) Therefore,
if I use verdana but leave the body font at 100% there really is no
problem.

Right or wrong?

Well, the point is that for Verdana 100% leaves it larger than it ought
to be.
And, again without the looooooong discussions please, what sans serif
font families do you put in your sites as a general rule if you don't
do verdana?

When it's up to me, I just put "sans-serif".
 
M

mrcakey

Els said:
Oops, misread the question. Read it as 'fall-back fonts'.
These days my favourite is "Trebuchet MS", with a fall-back to "Suse
Sans" and Verdana followed by Arial and Helvetica.

That's my favourite too! I fall back to Geneva then Arial/Helvetica though.
I like Tahoma for headings too.

+mrcakey
 
M

mrcakey

Mike Barnard said:
Hi.

Am I correct in thinking that the main problem with verdana is only if
the page designer reduces the body size below 100%? (This reduces
other fonts if the user doesn't have verdana, yadda yadda.) Therefore,
if I use verdana but leave the body font at 100% there really is no
problem.

Essentially yes, the main problem with Verdana (other than it's not
especially attractive) is that it's too big, which means that designers tend
to scale it down. Thing is, snipping any font down below 100% is likely to
cause readability problems for some. Some naive users may not know how to
rescale upwards. But the main problem is when the user doesn't have that
font on their system (e.g. Mac users) - the replacement font is also scaled
down and that may have been a normal size in the first place. So even more
users may have problems reading it.

If you're happy to leave it at 100% then go ahead, but the flow of your text
will look quite different in UAs where it isn't available.

+mrcakey
 
E

Els

mrcakey said:
That's my favourite too! I fall back to Geneva then Arial/Helvetica though.

Geneva is not bad either indeed, but Trebuchet MS is present on my Mac
too, so when would you ever get to see it, if Trebuchet is your first
choice?
I like Tahoma for headings too.

Yup, good for headings. Not so sure about body text though, a bit too
dense for my taste.
 
A

Andy Dingley

Therefore,
if I use verdana but leave the body font at 100% there really is no
problem.

Right or wrong?

Wrong. The size will still be wrong if Verdana does come into play.

However this is now just "wrong" as in "not what was intended", rather
than "wrong" as in "not what was intended and also unreadably small".
 
N

Nik Coughlin

Mike Barnard said:
And, again without the looooooong discussions please, what sans serif
font families do you put in your sites as a general rule if you don't
do verdana?

"Calibri", "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;

Calibri is generally only present on Vista and some XP machines (anything
with Office 2007 for starters, or with the Office 2007 compatibility pack,
or even the various free Office viewers) but that's a pretty big number of
machines and it's quite a nice font. Trebuchet MS is on pretty much
everything and is quite nice if slightly kooky looking.
 
N

Neredbojias

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:57:04
GMT Mike Barnard scribed:
Therefore,
if I use verdana but leave the body font at 100% there really is no
problem.

Right or wrong?

I don't think it's a question of right or wrong but how it looks with
both Verdana and another more-normal size typical font. For instance,
narrow columns would probably be more of a problem than full-width lines
of text. Also, some page layouts are more "text-critical" than others.

As for the objection in regards to its availability, I'd say enough
people have it to make that a paltry objection. Still, you should
incorporate a default like:

font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;

in case some radical excises it from his/her system or whatever.

Someone mentioned it wasn't particularly attractive, but I most heartily
disagree. I've used it considerably in the past and will probably use
it non-sparingly in the future.
 
B

Blinky the Shark

Els said:
I don't use verdana anymore, but when I did, it was Arial, Helvetica,
and a Linux font that I don't remember the name of.

Penguin Compressed? ;)

Hey, they press ducks, don't they?
 
M

Mike Barnard

Hi.

Yes, before you start saying this has been done to death, it has. But

A big thanks to all who entered into this one. I'm experimenting with
some of the most popularly named fonts from this thread, I'll see what
tickles my fancy.

Mike.
 
E

Els

Blinky said:
More detail, and images, here. It's quite a process:

http://fxcuisine.com/default.asp?Display=13

To be honest, the description in wikipedia turns me off more than the
images even. Apart from the strangling I suppose the duck doesn't
suffer, but it still sounds like torturing an animal while eating
it... And then "to extract duck blood and other juices" - what other
juices? I can only think of foul tasting ones :\
 

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