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Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / CSS / September 2007Best font selection for a menu?
I have a menu displayed on the left pane of my site. This menu has a title, then menu items and sometimes a subtitle that groups the menu items. My question is what collection of font selections would you recommend for this? something not too small but not too big yet fairly standard. Cheers Emilio > I have a menu displayed on the left pane of my site. This menu has a title, > then menu items and sometimes a subtitle that groups the menu items. > > My question is what collection of font selections would you recommend for > this? something not too small but not too big yet fairly standard. font: 100% sans-serif I might set color for a strong contrast with its background-color too (you might have a menu on a coloured block(s). It's "on the left", so I assume that means it's a vertical list of items. Such a menu is usually far shorter than the page body and can easily groww longer. For that reason there's no point in reducing font size. If it were a horizontal menu as an inline list, I might reduce the font-size to 80%, but no further. >> I have a menu displayed on the left pane of my site. This menu has a >> title, [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > font: 100% sans-serif What about normal body text? I had some fonts selected but apparently some people here had some objections. I modified it and now it only shows hideously large fonts that look like a primary school book :( For the body I have now (not satisfied with it) Times, "Trebuchet MS", Georgia, "Times New Roman",Verdana,Sans-Serif; .... www.FocusOnPanama.com .... meinte: > For the body I have now (not satisfied with it) Times, "Trebuchet MS", > Georgia, "Times New Roman",Verdana,Sans-Serif; What's that gonna be? Throw in all fonts you ever heard of? One sticks either to a hierarchy of sans fonts [1] or - if serifs are prefered - to an alternative list [2]. Your approach ends for many with Sans-Serif, since all other alternatives are restricted to one or the other OS. Win-Owner will get Times New Roman (serif), other blokes might see Sans-Serif (sans). Gregor [1] Tahoma, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; [2] Georgia, serif; (one or two platform specific, one compulsory generic is more than sufficient)  Signaturehttp://www.gregorkofler.at ::: Landschafts- und Reisefotografie http://www.licht-blick.at ::: Forum für Multivisionsvorträge http://www.image2d.com ::: Bildagentur für den alpinen Raum Scripsit Gregor Kofler: > .... www.FocusOnPanama.com .... meinte: > >> For the body I have now (not satisfied with it) Times, "Trebuchet >> MS", Georgia, "Times New Roman",Verdana,Sans-Serif; > > What's that gonna be? Throw in all fonts you ever heard of? It surely looks like that. I bet the author didn't actually check the page on all of those fonts. > Your approach ends for many with > Sans-Serif, since all other alternatives are restricted to one or the > other OS. Hardly. It would be a rare accident if none of the specific fonts existed in a user's system. > Win-Owner will get Times New Roman (serif), Hardly. I would be surprised if I found a Windows system that lacks both Trebuchet MS and Georgia. > other blokes might see Sans-Serif (sans). Rarely. It's a bad list, but for the reason that many of the specific fonts _are_ found on users' computers and the fonts are too different from each other. For example, they would require rather different line-height values. SignatureJukka K. Korpela ("Yucca") http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ Jukka K. Korpela meinte: > Scripsit Gregor Kofler: > [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > Hardly. It would be a rare accident if none of the specific fonts > existed in a user's system. But one might end up with a serif, others with a sans-serif. >> Win-Owner will get Times New Roman (serif), > > Hardly. I would be surprised if I found a Windows system that lacks both > Trebuchet MS and Georgia. ACK. I somehow mixed up Times and "Times New Roman"... >> other blokes might see Sans-Serif (sans). > > Rarely. Well, the fonts list on my Ubuntu distribution doesn't know "Tahoma". Nor "Arial" or "Helvetica". Only sans-serif. No "Georgia" either. And no "Trebuchet MS". My Ubuntu would see "sans-serif". > For example, they would require rather different line-height > values. ACK. Gregor Signaturehttp://www.gregorkofler.at ::: Landschafts- und Reisefotografie http://www.licht-blick.at ::: Forum für Multivisionsvorträge http://www.image2d.com ::: Bildagentur für den alpinen Raum > What about normal body text? I had some fonts selected but apparently > some people here had some objections. I modified it and now it only > shows hideously large fonts that look like a primary school book :( Depending on your concept/eyes for 'hideously large', perhaps you have a cascading error somewhere in your CSS. What is the link to this page? > For the body I have now (not satisfied with it) Times, "Trebuchet MS", > Georgia, "Times New Roman",Verdana,Sans-Serif; Why would you be mixing serif and sans-serif fonts? Sans-Serif should be lower case. Verdana should disappear. Signature-bts -Motorcycles defy gravity; cars just suck >> For the body I have now (not satisfied with it) Times, "Trebuchet MS", >> Georgia, "Times New Roman",Verdana,Sans-Serif; > > Why would you be mixing serif and sans-serif fonts? > > Sans-Serif should be lower case. Verdana should disappear. Unfortunately there are no pseudo-classes for particular fonts: body { background-color: white } body:verdana { color: white } :-) SignatureJón Fairbairn Jon.Fairbairn@cl.cam.ac.uk >> What about normal body text? I had some fonts selected but apparently > > Sans-Serif should be lower case. Verdana should disappear. I thought Verdana was the result of great effort to produce an extraordinarily readable font for the web. I gather from discussions that its spacing or height is so different from other fonts that it should never be used to design pages with, but is it really so bad that it should "disappear"? >>> What about normal body text? I had some fonts selected but >>> apparently [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > should never be used to design pages with, but is it really so bad > that it should "disappear"? The problem is that authors who choose Verdana look at their own monitors, see that it is large, and set a ridiculously small font *size*. Like: font-size: 10px or 75%... Then, for visitors without Verdana, they get the next fall-back font and it looks like flyspecks. http://k75s.home.att.net/fontsize.html I personally don't care for Verdana even when a proper size is used. Signature-bts -Motorcycles defy gravity; cars just suck > The problem is that authors who choose Verdana look at their own > monitors, see that it is large, and set a ridiculously small font > *size*. Like: font-size: 10px or 75%... Then, for visitors without > Verdana, they get the next fall-back font and it looks like flyspecks. That sounds like Mac users. Is it a Mac font? SignatureBlinky RLU 297263 Killing all posts from Google Groups The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org <----------- New Site Aug 28 > > The problem is that authors who choose Verdana look at their own > > monitors, see that it is large, and set a ridiculously small font > > *size*. Like: font-size: 10px or 75%... Then, for visitors without > > Verdana, they get the next fall-back font and it looks like flyspecks. > > That sounds like Mac users. Is it a Mac font? No, it's a Microsoft concoction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana >> font: 100% sans-serif > >What about normal body text? I had some fonts selected but apparently some >people here had some objections. I modified it and now it only shows >hideously large fonts that look like a primary school book :( That is a problem with the configuration of your PC or workstation. On my PC, 100% fonts have upper-case letters approximately 1/8" high, which is as small as I can comfortably read. If your browsing situation has 100% fonts too big for your tastes, fix *your* browsing situation; don't try to break mine. SignatureMichael F. Stemper #include <Standard_Disclaimer> Visualize whirled peas! > >> font: 100% sans-serif > > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > 100% fonts too big for your tastes, fix *your* browsing situation; don't > try to break mine. His default font is serif, most likely Times New Roman (default font of 99% browsers). So if you change font to sans-serif (most likely Arial or Helvetica, or even Verdana), it does look much bigger. Even if it has same font size. The height of upper case letters are exactly same. But only about 2% of characters are uppercase, so that doesn't really matter. What does matter is that lower case letters are considerable amount bigger. For normal body text, just don't set any font size, style, weight or family. SignatureLauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> > > font: 100% sans-serif > > What about normal body text? 100% (0r 80%, if you're IE - posts passim) > For the body I have now (not satisfied with it) Times, "Trebuchet MS", > Georgia, "Times New Roman",Verdana,Sans-Serif; That's ridiculous. "Trebuchet MS", Sans-Serif; has some rationale behind it, but not the rest. Why would you specify a serif Times Roman or Georgia with a sans-serif fallback? Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? The synonym mechanisms will merge those. Verdana has its own problems. The function of the font list is to specify _one_ font, from a list of candidates. Once one is matched, that's an end of it. You don't get extra "designer points" for how many cool fonts you can name on your way there! There's no style-osmosis between names listed together - at the end of the day, it's just one of them that makes it through. If you want something better than sans-serif, then specify a line of suitable candidates, including your own visual aesthetic favourites and favoured choices from each major platform (Windows, Mac, favourite Unix desktops). Use the generic name as a fallback. But don't just scatter-gun a random lists of fonts that you once heard mentioned. > Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? > The synonym mechanisms will merge those. Which "synonym mechanisms"? - Oh, perhaps you mean some entries in the so-called registry of MS Windows. But there are other operating systems than MS Windows and they don't have such "synonym mechanisms". Scripsit Andreas Prilop: >> Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? >> The synonym mechanisms will merge those. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > operating systems than MS Windows and they don't have such > "synonym mechanisms". Sorry, I have no idea of what either of you is saying here. In CSS, specifying font-family: Times, Times New Roman means suggesting Times as the primary font, Times New Roman as secondary. IE naturally gets part of this wrong, but that's a different story, and the font names are not synonyms. SignatureJukka K. Korpela ("Yucca") http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ >> Oh, perhaps you mean some entries >> in the so-called registry of MS Windows. But there are other >> operating systems than MS Windows and they don't have such >> "synonym mechanisms". > > Sorry, I have no idea of what either of you is saying here. FontSubstitutes entries in the Windows registry http://www.google.com/search?q=FontSubstitutes allow you to map (unavailable) font names to (available) font names. For example, Times=Times New Roman means that you have a typeface named "Times" in all programs - but the operating system will actually use Times New Roman for display. Other examples are Helvetica=Arial and Courier=Courier New . Scripsit Andreas Prilop: >>> Oh, perhaps you mean some entries >>> in the so-called registry of MS Windows. But there are other [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > allow you to map (unavailable) font names to (available) font > names. I have a vague idea of that, but how does that relate to CSS? > For example, Times=Times New Roman > means that you have a typeface named "Times" in all programs > - but the operating system will actually use Times New Roman > for display. Other examples are Helvetica=Arial and > Courier=Courier New . Well, maybe. If such definitions exist and take effect system-wide, they are comparable to creating copies of fonts under different names. It can be regarded as misleading and confusing, but I don't think is particularly relevant to CSS authoring. It's comparable to the fact that the same name can refer to different fonts in different computers (at least different _versions_ of a font). Besides, I just checked the settings in my current computer. Regedit tells that there are mappings for Times and Helvetica, as you wrote (though not for Courier). Yet, when I test an HTML document where I set font-family in CSS, text set to Helvetica is different from text set to Arial (though similar), and ditto for Times and Times New Roman. So the settings aren't that system-wide and penetrating after all. Thus, at least when taken as a general statement, Andy's claim "Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? The synonym mechanisms will merge those." was not correct, in CSS authoring, even if we limit ourselves to the Windows world. P.S. Followup-To overruled. Please don't set Followup-To without saying so in the message body. And in this case, I don't think there was any need to change group, since we were discussing fonts in the CSS context. SignatureJukka K. Korpela ("Yucca") http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ >> FontSubstitutes entries in the Windows registry >> http://www.google.com/search?q=FontSubstitutes >> allow you to map (unavailable) font names to (available) font >> names. > > I have a vague idea of that, but how does that relate to CSS? I didn't come up with these "synonym mechanisms". ;-) Authors on MS Windows might think it is unnecessary to include Helvetica or Times because the operating system already cares about these. > It can be > regarded as misleading and confusing, but I don't think is > particularly relevant to CSS authoring. I didn't come up with ... oh, I said this already. > Thus, at least when taken as a general statement, Andy's claim > "Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? > The synonym mechanisms will merge those." > was not correct, in CSS authoring, even if we limit ourselves to > the Windows world. Quite so. > Thus, at least when taken as a general statement, Andy's claim > "Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? The synonym mechanisms > will merge those." > was not correct, in CSS authoring, even if we limit ourselves to the Windows > world. Perhaps not, but it's (as ever) a pragmatic approach. What else are you going to do? Specify _every_ variant naming of "TNR/ Times/New/Roman/Rmn/Ramen" to try and make one stick? It's impossible to predict just how this "TNR" font has been named on an unknown platform. There's already a generic fallback mechanism available, that's enough to stop things "breaking" (by which I mean "failing to deliver some serifed font on a platform that has one"). For practical purposes of "Catching a Times Roman variant in favour of another serifed font" the CSS value << 'Times Roman', serif >> is adequate to cause this to happen on a useful share of platforms that could possibly do it, to a level that's better than << serif >> alone. A verbose attempt to list "everything" works no significantly better. Scripsit Andy Dingley: >> Thus, at least when taken as a general statement, Andy's claim >> "Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? The synonym [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > What else are you going to do? Specify _every_ variant naming of "TNR/ > Times/New/Roman/Rmn/Ramen" to try and make one stick? No, the point is that Times New Roman and Times (or Times Roman) can be different fonts. Of course it's a confusing game, and there is variation even under one name, perhaps more than between them. But it's still a meaningful idea to suggest, say, font-family: Times, Times New Roman What I expect to get is a Times font designed by Linotype, when available, and Times New Roman, a Microsoft font, otherwise (and more often). This makes sense if Times is regarded as somewhat better, and this is at least a defendable position. (Font name issues are boring, but see http://www.truetype-typography.com/articles/times.htm if you're interested.) SignatureJukka K. Korpela ("Yucca") http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ >> What else are you going to do? Specify _every_ variant naming of "TNR/ >> Times/New/Roman/Rmn/Ramen" to try and make one stick? > >No, the point is that Times New Roman and Times (or Times Roman) can be >different fonts. Of course. But they're _unknowably_ dfifferent, if we assume "the web" rather than some controlled intranet. >it's still a meaningful idea to suggest, say, > >font-family: Times, Times New Roman But what does that mean? Can you have a consistent expectation of this? Can you have that expectation for another set of font names? >What I expect to get is a Times font designed by Linotype, when available, >and Times New Roman, a Microsoft font, otherwise (and more often). I would suggest that this is over-optimistic, when aimed at "the web" in general. Times Roman is an unusual "best case" here, in that there is at least some degree of meaning to the variants (the Linotype / Monotype case back in the Paleolithic era). Even then, Adobe isn't the same as Apple, but (AFAIR) the names overlap from their shared origin. Scripsit Andy Dingley: >> No, the point is that Times New Roman and Times (or Times Roman) can >> be different fonts. > > Of course. But they're _unknowably_ dfifferent, if we assume "the web" > rather than some controlled intranet. That applies to pairs of font names in general. This case is actually relatively well predictable. But you can stop using font-family altogether if you like. :-) (You cannot really _know_ even about a single font that it looks the same on other people's browsers as yours. But you may decide not to take this too seriously.) SignatureJukka K. Korpela ("Yucca") http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ Jukka K. Korpela meinte: > (Font name issues are boring, but see > http://www.truetype-typography.com/articles/times.htm > if you're interested.) Very interesting and not boring at all. Gregor Signaturehttp://www.gregorkofler.at ::: Landschafts- und Reisefotografie http://www.licht-blick.at ::: Forum für Multivisionsvorträge http://www.image2d.com ::: Bildagentur für den alpinen Raum > Besides, I just checked the settings in my current computer. Regedit tells > that there are mappings for Times and Helvetica, as you wrote (though not for > Courier). Yet, when I test an HTML document where I set font-family in CSS, > text set to Helvetica is different from text set to Arial (though similar), > and ditto for Times and Times New Roman. How different is "different"? View the string 1 % in Arial, Helvetica, Times, Times New Roman. The digit one should be different in Arial/Helvetica; the percent sign should be different in Times/Times New Roman. http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/F/HLVQ/F_HLVQ-10005000.html http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/F/TIMQ/F_TIMQ-10005000.html http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/F/TMMQ/F_TMMQ-10005000.html >> Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? >> The synonym mechanisms will merge those. > >Which "synonym mechanisms"? That would be a matter for browser implementations, thus not part of the spec itself and thus off-charter for this ng. However I'm sure you'd agree that informally, in general terms of browser implementations, they are capable of mapping variant forms of /times( new)?( roman)?/ onto a variant of a "times roman" font that's available, even when the default stylesheet maps serif to a seriffed font other than these "times roman" variants. Scripsit Andy Dingley: >>> Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? >>> The synonym mechanisms will merge those. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > That would be a matter for browser implementations, thus not part of > the spec itself and thus off-charter for this ng. What? You must have confused this with the www-style list, or something. The charter is rather abstract: "This unmoderated news group is intended for the discussion of Web style sheets", followed by general advocacy of style sheets. Check the FAQ for clarifications: http://www.dev-archive.net/articles/faq/ciwas-mFAQ.html#C02 Note that "Bugs and limitations in implementations" have been explicitly mentioned. Besides, if synonym mechanisms were something off-topic, why did you mention them? And you're still refusing to give us any kind of definition. > However I'm sure you'd agree that informally, in general terms of > browser implementations, they are capable of mapping variant forms of > /times( new)?( roman)?/ onto a variant of a "times roman" font that's > available, even when the default stylesheet maps serif to a seriffed > font other than these "times roman" variants. How would that relate to _synonyms_, and what on &Planet; do you _mean_? Please do not hesitate to give an example (a URL, with specific explanation of what we should see there, please). SignatureJukka K. Korpela ("Yucca") http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ >>> Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? >>> The synonym mechanisms will merge those. >> Which "synonym mechanisms"? > > That would be a matter for browser implementations, thus not part of the > spec itself and thus off-charter for this ng. Would like to know more of this "synonym mechanisms" and which border supports such font substitutions. As to having to specify each variant of a font name, all I can say is it appears that you must use the name exactly, partial names just won't do, Times, "Times Roman", "Times New Roman"... It would be *nice* if Times or "Times Roman" would do but I have not witnessed such mechanism on any browser on Windows (any version) do it. Example is a Mac T1 font named "Papyrus" but the Windows TTF version is named "Papyrus LET". If you have the TTF installed on your Windows box and have body { font-family: papyrus; } You're going to see your default font, most likely "Times New Roman" and not "Papyrus LET" unless your have body { font-family: "papyrus let"; } So I would assume for both Mac and Windows boxes with Papyrus installed on both you would need body { font-family: papyrus, "papyrus let"; } > However I'm sure you'd agree that informally, in general terms of > browser implementations, they are capable of mapping variant forms of > /times( new)?( roman)?/ onto a variant of a "times roman" font that's > available, even when the default stylesheet maps serif to a seriffed > font other than these "times roman" variants. Which ones? SignatureTake care, Jonathan ------------------- LITTLE WORKS STUDIO http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com |
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