4 ms·

thanks for the above two posts. You guys made my day. I'm in the the final throws of trying to make a good site look "acceptable" on IE6. Your experience hel

thanks for the above two posts. You guys made my day. I'm in the the final throws of trying to make a good site look "acceptable" on IE6. Your experience helps my isolated decision process. I hope this threads runs further. Particularly, I am wrestling with this: My site is mostly text. Typography is king here. Its easy to make it look nice on OS X. But both Firefox and IE6 on WinXP look like hell. This is mostly a WinXP core fonts problem. But the same font between Firefox and IE6 on WinXP looks different and I can't find an acceptable balance. Let me add to that: I can't find any "readable" core font on WinXP. What do you do?

geuis 18y ago
I'm a Mac guy too, but have also spent years developing sites on Windows. One of the biggest giveaways that tell me a site has been developed exclusively on a Mac and probably not tested much on Windows is the fonts. This is a pretty recent chart of font availabilities: http://www.webspaceworks.com/resources/fonts-web-typography/48/ http://www.webspaceworks.com/resources/fonts-web-typography/... From personal experience, stay away from Lucida. One of the most common fonts across all platforms is Arial. I usually recommend using this for your general copy font. The attempt to render Lucida looks really crappy on Windows if its missing, and you can never tell which computers have it and which ones don't. That being said, Lucida is a nice looking font when its available. If you are you looking to use Lucida, read below. This is a solution that's been promoted for a couple years, font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; It was talked about here: http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2007/03/14/lucida-hybrid-the-grande-alternative/#comment-23011 http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2007/03/14/luci... There is an updated posting from this year that you should also read: http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2009/02/18/lucida-hybrid-revisited/ http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2009/02/18/luci... Its definitely a good idea to do some cross-platform testing. Another idea is to use the SIFR technique, although it relies on Flash(not my favorite recommendation).
- _pius 18y ago
  Another idea is to use the SIFR technique, although it relies on Flash(not my favorite recommendation). I'd actually recommend Cufón instead: http://wiki.github.com/sorccu/cufon/about http://wiki.github.com/sorccu/cufon/about
- jhancock 18y ago
  greatly appreciated!!!

geuis 18y ago

I'm a Mac guy too, but have also spent years developing sites on Windows. One of the biggest giveaways that tell me a site has been developed exclusively on a Mac and probably not tested much on Windows is the fonts. This is a pretty recent chart of font availabilities: http://www.webspaceworks.com/resources/fonts-web-typography/48/ http://www.webspaceworks.com/resources/fonts-web-typography/... From personal experience, stay away from Lucida. One of the most common fonts across all platforms is Arial. I usually recommend using this for your general copy font. The attempt to render Lucida looks really crappy on Windows if its missing, and you can never tell which computers have it and which ones don't. That being said, Lucida is a nice looking font when its available. If you are you looking to use Lucida, read below. This is a solution that's been promoted for a couple years, font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; It was talked about here: http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2007/03/14/lucida-hybrid-the-grande-alternative/#comment-23011 http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2007/03/14/luci... There is an updated posting from this year that you should also read: http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2009/02/18/lucida-hybrid-revisited/ http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2009/02/18/luci... Its definitely a good idea to do some cross-platform testing. Another idea is to use the SIFR technique, although it relies on Flash(not my favorite recommendation).

_pius 18y ago
Another idea is to use the SIFR technique, although it relies on Flash(not my favorite recommendation). I'd actually recommend Cufón instead: http://wiki.github.com/sorccu/cufon/about http://wiki.github.com/sorccu/cufon/about
jhancock 18y ago
greatly appreciated!!!