5 ms·

Thank you, now you have ruined Arial for me. Before this test I considered the differences negligible, without really knowing what the differences are. Now I c

Thank you, now you have ruined Arial for me. Before this test I considered the differences negligible, without really knowing what the differences are. Now I consider Helvetica much more elegant and incisive.

aidos 14y ago
Maybe it is more elegant, but if you don't want cross browser, cross platform rendering issues you'll stick with Arial.
- Trezoid 14y ago
  No, you should stick with verdana. It's fully cross-platform, designed from the start to be a screen font, and generally looks better. Alternatively, @font-face is supported by just about everything at this point, opening up the opportunity to use much better fonts, like open sans (also, helvetica is a print font. It doesn't work for body copy at the sizes commonly used for screen text.)
  - navs 14y ago
    Learn something new every day. I've always used Helvetica on all my web pages at the behest of my design co-worker. He's a print designer so it makes sense now.
    - mortenjorck 14y ago
      Well, it really depends on how the digitization of Helvetica that any particular user has installed is hinted. The Helvetica that comes with MacOS is quite nicely hinted, and will make for a pleasant read at most sizes. On Windows, however, Helvetica isn't (at least from my experience) as nicely hinted, or at least doesn't play quite as well with Microsoft ClearType. And that's if it's installed, which is less likely on Windows. In that case, if your font stack specifies a fallback to Arial, which is ClearType's best friend, you'll probably be fine.
    - Trezoid 14y ago
      Suggest he looks at open sans. It's a fantastic screen font that works very well for large headers (especially at a lighter weight), and body copy.
    - PeterisP 14y ago
      I hope you do test how it looks on windows? I've worked with a webdesigner that often chose fonts that worked perfectly on his mac, but looked really ugly on all windows browsers, since the fonts were unavailable and the substitutes had noticable style/width differences.
  - Kluny 14y ago
    I too am a fan of Verdana.
  - prawn 14y ago
    Verdana is wide enough that it brings problems trying to fit links within a horizontal nav bar.
- notJim 14y ago
  No, just put sans-serif. Windows users get arial, os x users get helvetica, Linux users get whatever. Everybody wins.
  - mynameisvlad 14y ago
    No, this is horrible advice. The difference in the fonts will make your site look completely different to people using different OSes.
    - e1ven 14y ago
      As it should! ;) Lately we've developed this fetish for sites being pixel-perfect across any display. The web was designed to decouple the way a site was designed from the way it's displayed. To allow it to reflow, and people to use their own designs. If you really want pixel-perfect layout, why not just use bitmaps and imagemaps ;)
      - tonybaroneee 14y ago
        THIS IS COMPLETE AGAINST EVERYTHING I WAS TAUGHT AHHH
        femto 14y ago
        Funnily enough, it is exactly what I was taught! I'll freely admit that I'm a 'Philistine', when to comes to these matters. I've always taken the view that you throw the text at an engine and let it do the rendering. If it doesn't look right, the engine needs improving. Manual tweaks fall into the realm of premature optimisation, as chances are the content will change faster than the tweaks can be made. I can see that beautiful typography is nice to have, but apart from automation, I can't see a way to apply it on a mass scale. Crafted typography is the typographic equivalent of assembly language?
      - talmand 14y ago
        Well, as long as the development request isn't for pixel perfect. Many people outside the control of development see the mockup from Photoshop and completely freak out when it doesn't match exactly. You try explaining that in the long run it doesn't matter, that browser incompatibilities prevent this, and that it will take longer to achieve that. The people "who know" what's needed don't care about that stuff. Although, a common way to get them out of their "I know better" state is to point out the time factor and how much extra it will cost them. Suddenly they will worry over browser incompatibilities all day long. The worse are the people that point out that the fifth paragraph on the third page ends with three words on the final line in the mockup but the website version has four words in Firefox and two words in Chrome. I just want to so tell them to just let the text flow its own way, dude. In the end I tell them in a nice way they're being silly.
sjwright 14y ago
Helvetica is indeed the better font, but this is an unfair example because the Arial alternatives were poorly kerned, whereas the logos were (with few exceptions) expertly kerned.
- pippy 14y ago
  You're also limited to one weight with web safe Ariel, which I noticed most of those logos had non standard weights.

aidos 14y ago

Maybe it is more elegant, but if you don't want cross browser, cross platform rendering issues you'll stick with Arial.

Trezoid 14y ago
No, you should stick with verdana. It's fully cross-platform, designed from the start to be a screen font, and generally looks better. Alternatively, @font-face is supported by just about everything at this point, opening up the opportunity to use much better fonts, like open sans (also, helvetica is a print font. It doesn't work for body copy at the sizes commonly used for screen text.)
- navs 14y ago
  Learn something new every day. I've always used Helvetica on all my web pages at the behest of my design co-worker. He's a print designer so it makes sense now.
  - mortenjorck 14y ago
    Well, it really depends on how the digitization of Helvetica that any particular user has installed is hinted. The Helvetica that comes with MacOS is quite nicely hinted, and will make for a pleasant read at most sizes. On Windows, however, Helvetica isn't (at least from my experience) as nicely hinted, or at least doesn't play quite as well with Microsoft ClearType. And that's if it's installed, which is less likely on Windows. In that case, if your font stack specifies a fallback to Arial, which is ClearType's best friend, you'll probably be fine.
  - Trezoid 14y ago
    Suggest he looks at open sans. It's a fantastic screen font that works very well for large headers (especially at a lighter weight), and body copy.
  - PeterisP 14y ago
    I hope you do test how it looks on windows? I've worked with a webdesigner that often chose fonts that worked perfectly on his mac, but looked really ugly on all windows browsers, since the fonts were unavailable and the substitutes had noticable style/width differences.
- Kluny 14y ago
  I too am a fan of Verdana.
- prawn 14y ago
  Verdana is wide enough that it brings problems trying to fit links within a horizontal nav bar.
notJim 14y ago
No, just put sans-serif. Windows users get arial, os x users get helvetica, Linux users get whatever. Everybody wins.
- mynameisvlad 14y ago
  No, this is horrible advice. The difference in the fonts will make your site look completely different to people using different OSes.
  - e1ven 14y ago
    As it should! ;) Lately we've developed this fetish for sites being pixel-perfect across any display. The web was designed to decouple the way a site was designed from the way it's displayed. To allow it to reflow, and people to use their own designs. If you really want pixel-perfect layout, why not just use bitmaps and imagemaps ;)
    - tonybaroneee 14y ago
      THIS IS COMPLETE AGAINST EVERYTHING I WAS TAUGHT AHHH
      - femto 14y ago
        Funnily enough, it is exactly what I was taught! I'll freely admit that I'm a 'Philistine', when to comes to these matters. I've always taken the view that you throw the text at an engine and let it do the rendering. If it doesn't look right, the engine needs improving. Manual tweaks fall into the realm of premature optimisation, as chances are the content will change faster than the tweaks can be made. I can see that beautiful typography is nice to have, but apart from automation, I can't see a way to apply it on a mass scale. Crafted typography is the typographic equivalent of assembly language?
    - talmand 14y ago
      Well, as long as the development request isn't for pixel perfect. Many people outside the control of development see the mockup from Photoshop and completely freak out when it doesn't match exactly. You try explaining that in the long run it doesn't matter, that browser incompatibilities prevent this, and that it will take longer to achieve that. The people "who know" what's needed don't care about that stuff. Although, a common way to get them out of their "I know better" state is to point out the time factor and how much extra it will cost them. Suddenly they will worry over browser incompatibilities all day long. The worse are the people that point out that the fifth paragraph on the third page ends with three words on the final line in the mockup but the website version has four words in Firefox and two words in Chrome. I just want to so tell them to just let the text flow its own way, dude. In the end I tell them in a nice way they're being silly.

sjwright 14y ago

Helvetica is indeed the better font, but this is an unfair example because the Arial alternatives were poorly kerned, whereas the logos were (with few exceptions) expertly kerned.

pippy 14y ago
You're also limited to one weight with web safe Ariel, which I noticed most of those logos had non standard weights.