Web Typography - Part2

FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

How convenient, css has made our life!. Define the font face in the style sheet and just keep attaching the css in all the pages.

Hold. But why Verdana, Arial, Helvetica forever? For a change-can we use some other font face?

For the first question, most of us know the answer. These are web safe fonts and are legible in sizes used in the web. The comfortable x-height, line spacing and character spacing make these fonts a good choice for web. Finally if none of this font face is available, the viewer will be provided with the default sans-serif option in their system.

Serif – A font face with small extensions, which guide the user’s eyes from one character to the other. Our own “Times New Roman” is a good example of serif font face.
Sans-serif – A font face without a serif, or without any extensions. In print sans-serifs are used for headers, which has bigger font size and serifs are used for the content.

There are a whole lot of characteristics with which we can group font faces, besides just the serifs and sans-serif. Typography as a subject offers a great scope for this. Besides there are legibility studies which try to understand the best type face that can be used for a print/web purpose. http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/3S/font.htm, http://www.alexpoole.info/academic/literaturereview.html.
Well, these are just two links I came across about legibility studies. There is ofcourse a lot of argument, for and against a particular type face.

But as always - "Change is inevitable"
So are we ready for a change of type face for the web? Let’s discuss.