I updated WordPress yesterday, then went back to working on my office, preparing it for the bookcases that are arriving today or tomorrow. I had a busy day, and didn’t post anything last night. So when I saw this morning that my update had restored the original theme CSS (a fact which pisses me off mightily, I will point out), I had to go back and take out ugly, compressed, badly-letterspaced font with a much more readable and well-spaced font.
And let me say that the people who design CSS themes for the web, thinking they are oh-so-creative, and know nothing about typography are morons. It is NOT READABLE when you letterspace a font so closely that ALL of the letters start to blend together, not just the ligatures.
And the fact that most of the non-typographers reading this are going, “Huh? Ligatures?” makes my point exactly. If you are one of the people who designs style sheets for blogs, pick up a book on typography before creating a font that makes your readers’ eyes hurt.
/type rant for the day
By any chance, was the font that you ‘banished’ Tahoma? I have seen it on a couple of other WordPress websites, and always wondered why anyone would choose it, as it is a condensed font and very hard to read, especially in large blocks of type. The act of condensing a font used to have some advantages in the days of ink-on-paper, but now is much less useful (it’s not like we’re going to run out of pixels or anything). But if it’s a default option and they don’t know enough to change it, that would actually make sense…
Or are you talking about a regular font, but calling out negative letterspacing in the CSS? Just curious.
Honestly, I don’t recall the font name. But there was a -75% letterspacing, which is really stupid. Unbelievably unreadable type. People who don’t know type should be required by law to not make fonts for web pages.
Personally, I think most web pages shouldn’t specify fonts at all (outside, perhaps, of borders and decorative sections of the page.) Every browser lets you configure a preferred font and size. The main content of a web page should simply use that configuration. So what if I like Helvetica and someone else likes Times Roman? Why should some faceless webmaster come along and decide that we have to be forced to read text in his preferred (and quite possibly unreadable) font?
If your content is your text, then let the reader read it in the font/size he’s most comfortable with.
Spoken like a true computer geek.
David, the average person doesn’t even know where to find the menu that controls their browser typeface.
Also, uh, you know, publishing is all about making things look a certain way to readers. And while yes, you have to account for the internet’s ability to turn all readers into publishers, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make your presentation attractive.
Really, you should stop and think about what you’re asking. Basically, you want a return to the late 1980s. You have fun back in BBS and CompuServe days. Me, I’ll take the 21st century with all its glories.
Oh, the banished font was Lucida. I had to replace it again yesterday due to another security upgrade. WP, she is having troubles with hack attacks, methinks.
Unless your articles are about typography, it shouldn’t matter what font or spacing people see. The best way for people to read your text is to present it in a font/size that they can most easily read. And since there is no single format that everybody is comfortable with, it’s far better to just leave the whole mess up to the browser itself.
You say I want a return to the 1980’s. The way I see it, you want a return to the 1880’s – where a small select number of professionals dictate how all text everywhere must be formatted.
David, I cannot have a discussion about typography and publishing with someone who doesn’t understand the entire concept of publishing. I’m done here.