Readable on-screen fonts
Adobe with the introduction of PostScript Type 1 fonts and Apple with their Truetype technology led the way in readable outline fonts for screen use. Microsoft has continued the trend with their ESQ (Enhanced Screen Quality) Truetype fonts. Microsoft have to be thanked for making freely available an excellent set of scalable, screen display fonts that have become the staple of Web typography:
- Verdana
- Trebuchet MS
- Georgia
- Arial
- Times New Roman
- Courier New
Verdana, and Georgia were conceived from the outset as outline fonts optimised for screen use. Designed by Mathew Carter and 'hinted' by Tom Rickner they are both readable and clear even at relatively small sizes.
Hinting means the manual modification of a font to make it look as good as possible on low resolution monitors, "A well-hinted font offers the quality only provided in the past by hand-tuned bitmaps - but with all the speed and reduced memory requirements which characterize outline font formats." (see Introduction to hinting).
A selection of 'safe to use' fonts
- Both Arial and Times New Roman, have been especially hinted to work well on computer screens and as a result they are now considered by many to be good choices for Web use.
- Times New Roman is certainly a good compromise serif font for Web documents that are likely to printed to be read off-line, although, the design of Georgia makes it a better looking more readable serif font for documents designed exclusively for screen display.
- Arial is probably the most popular - and some would say overused - font to be found on Web pages, and is very clear unless used in small sizes.
- Verdana is a good alternative to Arial, and is more readable at small sizes on low resolution screens.
It is important to remember that even the fonts listed above will only be seen by the end user if they have them installed on their computers.
The above mentioned Microsoft fonts are built-in to Windows 95 (and PC operating systems later than Windows 95), many of them are bundled with Microsoft Word (the world's most popular word processor with over 90% market share on both PC and Mac ). They have also been bundled with Microsoft's Internet Explorer since version 3.
When considering what font to use the safest choices in terms of readability and availability on other platforms can be made from the fonts that come with Internet Explorer (and also installed with many Microsoft products). From those fonts the two 'cleanest' for web use are likely to be Verdana (sans-serif) and Georgia (serif) as they have been designed specifically to look good on low resolution screens.
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