Favorite readable online font? Please answer :)

[unsider]

I know this an unusual question, but the tutorial section of my site will contain a lot of potiental reading material, so I'm trying to create an ideal reading space for people.

 

I realize that this opinion varies from person to person, but I'm trying to atleast narrow it down, or find one that we can all sort of agree upon.

 

Also, if there are any other tips you want to throw in about making a ideal reading space, please do, I need all the help I can get.

 

So let's hear those font names.

[Daniel0]

Helvetica, Arial and Verdana are all good. Not all people have Helvetica though, but Arial is very close to that. I usually do Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif. For reading on screen it's easier with sans-serif fonts (all of which the before-mentioned are) whereas printed text is often easier to read if it's using a serif font.

 

Ideally you should have around 66 characters per line as that will be easier to read because it will put less strain on the eyes seeing as you do not have to move them horizontally. Using a width of 66em should take care of that. While 66 chars is the ideal, anything within the range 45 to 75 characters would also be acceptable.

 

Aligning the text to the left would be best. Justified text don't work very well on the web because you cannot control the positioning of the individual glyphs. By using justified text you will risk getting what's called rivers through the text. It's basically empty space that looks like rivers through your paragraphs. Those can be distracting when reading and thus make the readability lower. In print design you can manually correct that and compensate for that, but that's not possible on the web. Besides, I recall having read somewhere that sans-serif fonts look best when they're ragged right (i.e. aligned left), but I haven't really looked into that.

 

You will only be able to use a small subset of fonts on the web because you rely on them being installed the client computer. There are alternatives such as sIFR and CSS image replacement using backgrounds, but those should only be used for headlines or other sort of decorative text as they don't work well with large blocks of text.

 

Furthermore, you can also play around with the leading and letter spacing. Setting the leading at around 1.5em will probably be good. If it's too low then the text will look cramped together, if it's too high then it will be difficult to read because of the large vertical space between each line.

[unsider]

Wow that was more extensive than I thought I'd get asking this question.

 

Thanks, I really appreciate it.

 

Just want to make sure my users don't go blind. 

[neylitalo]

Disclaimer: I am biased and have a political agenda as well as aesthetical.

 

I always put the appropriate Liberation font first in my font lists, and then the appropriate Microsoft font. The Liberation fontset are Free fonts intended to take the place of Microsoft's core font set. As much as I'd like it to be otherwise, the majority of my users are going to be using Microsoft products, so I can't leave them out in the cold. But when I can, I like to let my freedom-loving users take advantage of the free fonts they may have installed.

[jcombs_31]

I agree with pretty much everything Daniel said.  I find myself using Arial more than anything.  In the past I really used Verdana a lot.  I wish Calibri was a supported font because I like that a lot.

[TheFilmGod]

verdana for paragraph text and arial for headings and navigation. both are just as good. Depends on your style!

[Daniel0]

I wish Calibri was a supported font because I like that a lot.

 

With Calibri as default font in MS Office 2007, that might change some day.

[scottybwoy]

You may want to look at this article from "A List Apart" which looks into the use of tabloid style columns for reading on the web.  I've not used it myself and don't know how affective it is but is worth a go.

[tibberous]

MS Serif

[cgm225]

Verdana (see here)