Typeface selection in CSS

[Alan J. Flavell]

Did you expect anyone to know what you were talking about based on
what you wrote?

In the context of "one data point" it seemed as much as I needed.
The topic as far as I was concerned was to illustrate the fact that
displays are improving with time. Not to discuss in detail one
person's particular browsing habits, which is what this thread seems
to have degenerated into (apologies to other readers...)

A "calibration in the OS" cannot reliably establish the actual
resolution of a CRT viewing device

I'm not talking about its optical resolution, but the number of
increments of display co-ordinate per inch on the screen. This can be
(and in this case is) calibrated, with a ruler.

since it does not take into account
the granularity of the phosphor clusters.

Quite. That was not part of my "one data point".

There most definitely is harm in setting the screen area setting at a
value beyond what the CRT can display, information is lost when you do
that. This may not be apparent by judging the result on esthetics, in
fact it may even appear to be more pleasing to the eye, but you are
deluding yourself.

Thank you for this interesting lecture.

Incidentally, I've been noticing increasingly that when I have
authors' styles enabled, they're tending more and more to propose
serif fonts, which in earlier times was rare. While I've often been
the first to complain about misguided choices by designers, this does
seem to convey some kind of message.

The bottom line, what I wanted to illustrate in this thread, was that
some of the details that one took for granted some years back may need
to be reconsidered in the light of the current situation. My
impression is that this particular issue is about ready for a
turnover, which is more or less what I said before. As it happens, I
still have a sans font configured myself as default (this one here is
Lucida Sans Unicode), I'm just making the point that a serif font is
not necessarily wrong, and soon may well be taken for granted just as
it is in paper publishing.

But whatever you say, I persist in my assertion that the user's own
choice of font is by definition their choice, and as authors it's our
job to work with that. If they choose Verdana then that's perfectly
fine by me, I see no reason to argue with them about it, but of course
they'll also need to choose their preferred size, and protect that
choice from inappropriate interference from other sources. If the
design then falls apart, it's not the user's fault.

The known problems with Verdana, as illustrated on Poley's
demonstration page, relate to authoring choices, not to user
choices - http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/verdana.html

An improved version of font-size-adjust would offer a possible
resolution of that issue, but instead of improving a flawed start,
most browser implementers ignored it entirely, and now the W3C have
taken it away altogether.

 

[Toby Inkster]

Standard TFTs seem to be made for about 95dpi, but as you've said
yourself, there are some which are signficantly higher (albeit you say
you only met them on laptops).

You can get 128dpi CRTs for under £100 now. 19" at 1920x1440.

 

[Spartanicus]

The topic as far as I was concerned was to illustrate the fact that
displays are improving with time.

You specifically brought up resolution, the best CRT models provide
~0.24mm dot pitch, this hasn't changed in over a decade. A dot pitch of
0.24mm translates into a maximum obtainable resolution of 106PPI.

Flat panel displays are available in higher resolutions, they are almost
exclusively found in a few niche laptops. Any significant increase
cannot be summed up as an "improvement" given the new issues the higher
resolution introduces.

I'm just making the point that a serif font is
not necessarily wrong

I mentioned a particular issue with regard to serif fonts, but I did so
in a way that defies a binary right/wrong classification.

But whatever you say, I persist in my assertion that the user's own
choice of font is by definition their choice, and as authors it's our
job to work with that. If they choose Verdana then that's perfectly
fine by me, I see no reason to argue with them about it, but of course
they'll also need to choose their preferred size, and protect that
choice from inappropriate interference from other sources.

The last addition is a rather crucial one, and very difficult to convey
to the average user given the new issues that such a counter measure is
likely to introduce.

If the design then falls apart, it's not the user's fault.

Certainly, but it is something the user will be confronted with. This is
fine as long as the user has made in informed choice, few are likely to
given the complexity of the issue.

The known problems with Verdana, as illustrated on Poley's
demonstration page, relate to authoring choices, not to user
choices - http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/verdana.html

The understanding that similar issues exists with Verdana as a user font
are less well understood by fewer people. That doesn't mean that no such
issue exists.

An improved version of font-size-adjust would offer a possible
resolution of that issue, but instead of improving a flawed start,
most browser implementers ignored it entirely,

I'm not aware of any implementation of the font-size-adjust property.

and now the W3C have taken it away altogether.

It's only removed from CSS 2.1 because one of 2.1's stated purposes is
that it should better reflect what has actually been implemented.

Font-size-adjust is back as part of CSS3, taken verbatim from the 2.0
spec afaik.