[Pydotorg-redesign] Draft HTML for redesign proposal

[Michael Geary]

Hi Tim!

You know what I'm going to say, don't you? :-)

Yeah, it's the text.

It's a lot better than it was before--the font size is completely reasonable
now.

(As a reminder, I use a Thinkpad A30p with a 15" 1600x1200 display, i.e. 133
pixels per inch--a typical pixel density for high-end notebooks. I'm running
Windows XP with ClearType enabled, using Mozilla Firebird with 18 pixel
Georgia as my default font and a minimum font size of 14 pixels.)

Here's what I don't like, though:

* Not black. I know that you consider less contrast to be easier on the
eyes, but I have to tell you that with my eyes, on my computer, it just
ain't so. I spend all day, every day, looking at text, and I've tried lots
of variations of font and color. Black on white is by far the best for me.
This is especially true now that I use ClearType--black on white gives
ClearType the most room to work with, and colored text suffers especially
because it severely limits how much subpixel antialiasing can be done. But
even before I used ClearType, black on white was the best on my LCD
displays.

* Arial font. I saw your discussion on your site about Arial vs. Verdana,
but for me Verdana is really quite a bit more readable. Also, I think that
the fact that Verdana distinguishes between upper case "I" and lower case
"l" is a big point in its favor on a site where that distinction may be
significant.

* But why force a sans-serif font at all? I know that traditionally, serif
fonts have suffered from poor readability on a computer display, and the
traditional default browser font has been a serif font, so web designers
have forced sans-serif fonts in an attempt to gain more readability. But for
me, the combination of the Georgia font, ClearType, and the high-resolution
LCD panel have changed that completely. For the first time, I can really
make use of the benefits of a serif font (which as you know is more readable
than sans-serif in print).

Do me a favor and beg, borrow, or steal a notebook with a high-resolution
LCD like mine--a 15" 1600x1200 or a 14.1" 1400x1050 will do the trick--and
take a look at this:

http://www.geary.com/python/pyfonts.png

The text on the left is from your sample, and the text on the right is from
the original python.org page using my default browser font settings (black
Georgia), both rendered in Mozilla Firebird. I don't know how they will
compare on a lower resolution LCD or on a CRT (ClearType might mess both of
them up on a CRT), but on my high-resolution LCD there's no contest.

But what the heck, I could live with a sans-serif font if it were black
Verdana. :-)

Sorry if I sound like a one-trick pony, but when I'm reading text, text is
what I care about.

Thanks for listening to my input!

-Mike