Best font choice for forum reading?
- Thread starter CTXMedia
- Start date
Carlos
Well-known member
Thank you sir!
Cryptkeeper
Member
I like Calibri for the web. add in a little bit of a serif or bolder for the heading, with a good line-height (1.4-1.6) and some kerning (letter space -1px or -2px) makes things look really nice.
grant sarver
Well-known member
That's the usual accepted wisdom. Hard to find supporting evidence. THIS ARTICLE on the subject is interesting.My Web Mastering teacher told my class that serif fonts were proven to make it easier to read as your eyes will follow the lines on the bottom, but I don't take her advice, I can teach the class better then her.
Deepmartini
Well-known member
Good article even at over 10 years old. Just wondering if conventional wisdom has changed and if Dr Wilson should re-run his usability tests. People's surfing and reading habits have changed and been influenced over time. I think readability must now include "scanability" as most people do a quick run-down with their eyes before digging in deeper to really read.
Cryptkeeper
Member
My Web Mastering teacher told my class that serif fonts were proven to make it easier to read as your eyes will follow the lines on the bottom, but I don't take her advice
you don't follow the line at the bottom. you follow the profile of the lettering on TOP of the letters. This is why all-caps is a horrible idea.
Cryptkeeper
Member
also, IMHO, use san serif for body text, and serif for the headers. (unless you want a fancy sans for the header, that's fine too)
Anthony Parsons
Well-known member
My understanding was that Serif fonts were the best for paper and Sans-Serif the best for monitors, from a reading perspective.
Dragapult
Well-known member
I agree. I find Calibri is a very good all-purpose font, and I generally prefer sans serif when reading on a display. I still like Georgia and Constantia, though, the latter being a slight variation of the former.
I've also noticed that Constantia seems to be a serif version of Calibri. At least that's how I think of it.
I use XenForo default font on my sites and I like this one very much. I felt this way about small font size about a month ago, but I didn't think on the psychology behind it. I just thought if it was hard for people to read my stuff they wouldn't stay on the page as long. Whatever, a recipe as easier to prepare in a simple font. We humans have amazing hard wired tendencies that are invisible until we study them. Fascinating.
Calibri isn't a web safe font, it was created for Office 2007.
It needs to be installed on the device being used to view the page.
craigiri
Well-known member
I'd say most folks would do best following the lead of those who study these things scientifically.
Google, for instance!
I heard a podcast by Marissa Meyer about how they do A/B testing. I'm convinced that following their basics would result in the largest possible number of people reading text - from a general audience. I think they use Arial.
They also now have their own collection of web fonts -:
http://www.google.com/webfonts#HomePlace:home
Of course, if your forum is for gaming or something which addresses a specific audience who may have younger and better eyes, you may have more options!
But, all in all, I think you cannot go wrong by modeling the Big Guys.
Apple and facebook both use sans-serif fonts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucida_Grande
and Arial/Helvetica family if no Lucida
Google, for instance!
I heard a podcast by Marissa Meyer about how they do A/B testing. I'm convinced that following their basics would result in the largest possible number of people reading text - from a general audience. I think they use Arial.
They also now have their own collection of web fonts -:
http://www.google.com/webfonts#HomePlace:home
Of course, if your forum is for gaming or something which addresses a specific audience who may have younger and better eyes, you may have more options!
But, all in all, I think you cannot go wrong by modeling the Big Guys.
Apple and facebook both use sans-serif fonts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucida_Grande
and Arial/Helvetica family if no Lucida
I switched my whole site to use Arial.
I know Arial is a little unadventurous, but it is one of the narrowest fonts, and as we have a fixed width style (designed to fit on 1024 screens), we need as much horizontal space as we can get.
Oh and it's predictable - it's 100% certain that every single device, OS and browser has it installed.
I know Arial is a little unadventurous, but it is one of the narrowest fonts, and as we have a fixed width style (designed to fit on 1024 screens), we need as much horizontal space as we can get.
Oh and it's predictable - it's 100% certain that every single device, OS and browser has it installed.
3c
Active member
That's just what I've been doing all morning is trying out all the different fonts. Got a 21 yo on skype with me watching also as I switch back and forth through them.
Funny how many times she said, looks about the same to me....
Big difference to my old eyes. We're going with Arial also. I love the look of the Trebuchet, but I can *read* Arial so much better...
Funny how many times she said, looks about the same to me....
Big difference to my old eyes. We're going with Arial also. I love the look of the Trebuchet, but I can *read* Arial so much better...
Dragapult
Well-known member
All Windows OS from Vista onward have it by default. You also have it if you've installed Office 2007 or later (including 2011 on the Mac.) So, if you don't have any of these things, you're likely not seeing it because it's not installed on your system.
shenmuee
Active member
But I'm using that as OS Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 and Office Starter Pack tho can't see calibrİ font, so i thought that may the calibri font was removed from new version of xenforo
as new font i seeing Font Family & Andale Mono xP
