What should the defualt font and size be?

[digitaljunkie]

I am redesigning a gui from scratch and the client wants Arial 12pt but I am saying Arial 11pt as its displayed mainly on 15 and 17" displays (Windows).

What do you guys/gals suggest or use?

[LaRetta]

I prefer 11-point Verdana.

[digitaljunkie]

thanks LaRetta out of interest what are your reasons?

I initially had said verdana or trebuchet, as I read somewhere about these viewing and printing the same on both mac and pc platforms as arial is a little iffy.

anyone else got an opinion as I want to change the fonts over this week - lol

[David McQueen]

I also vote verdana. I usually use 10 Pt. bold capitals for screen commands.

Point size will depend on the screen resolution you want to support.

I have also seen work done in Espy Sans. This font displays amazingly well in small points but it is not generally distributed and I am not sure of it's cross platform characteristics. I am working on Mac.

[Ender]

FYI: In FM7/8 on OS X, there are printing and PDF size issues with some fonts. Times, Times New Roman, and New York, among others, result in huge print jobs when used in complex reports. Too bad, because I kinda like them for printing.

[David McQueen]

FYI: In FM7/8 on OS X, there are printing and PDF size issues with some fonts. Times, Times New Roman, and New York, among others, result in huge print jobs when used in complex reports. Too bad, because I kinda like them for printing.

Thanks for the heads up on this. I do not use them often, but I have always liked these fonts for printing.

[ThatOneGuy]

Hi Steve:

Put me in the Verdana camp. In addition to it being supported on both platforms, its crispness on the screen is hard to beat. Sans-serif fonts seem easier on the eyes over long durations.

David mentioned screen resolution as a main consideration, and I couldn't agree more. If we experiment with some arbitrary text strings, we find Verdana does not produce the shortest length, but neither is it the longest. This "length" factor of (a) character size and (}:| kerning really adds up when we place several fields on the same horizontal line. I've found Verdana 10-point delivers pretty well under an assortment of resolutions.

Finally, the clincher for me was the display of numeric values in Verdana. Again, the appearance of numerals in a sans-serif font makes it easy on the eyes, but the kerning of Verdana makes numbers much more discernable at a glance. That whole "garbage-in/garbage-out" problem must be addressed whenever and wherever practicable. For me, the accuracy of numeric values is a worthy candidate.

[digitaljunkie]

Thank you for your replies it is interesting as having a print background I find it easy to relate or moreover utilize my design skill in filemaker, I personally am not the biggest fan of Arial although I have used it in print jobs before.

When I walked into this Arial font for screen jobs like filemaker solutions I always felt verdana to look cleaner across both platform also for the fact its the font every developer i had read about would refer to, or in training videos had used.

Seeing real life examples or fellow developers preferences is really good becuase it gives you real world examples and not just one persons say so or books guideline.

The best thing is the reasons behind everyones useage, everyone seems to have a first hand experience/reason for their preference, and now I do too....

....After loading up my own solution into Arial on my wintel and on my mac on a 15" TFT it looked awful, when I switch the layout to verdana it looks lovely, but then my stationary uses the same font so maybe I am biased }:|

The interesting thing is I utilize print layouts in my solution so If required I can change the printed font over to something else per the end users request.

Thankyou for your replies its interesting to see this topic build up and I am sure it will also help others with the same question.

Anyone else wishing to offer there prefernce would be cool.