[Pydotorg-redesign] Draft HTML for redesign proposal

[Tim Parkin]

Anna (although the reply is a general one):
>So far, my favorite is the antialias Verdana. It shows up clear and
clean on 
>Opera 7.11. The nonantialias versions are worst - with Arial slightly
worse 
>than Verdana... 

Unfortunately most users (most windows and some linux) won't have a
choice of using anti-alias. The argument about legibility of fonts can
be confused as there are two types of reading. One if word reading,
where the individual letter clarity is important, and for this verdana
wins hands down. The other is sentence reading, where word shapes are
more important as the brain doesn't process letter by letter. For this,
in my opinion, arial wins as it's condensed face creates word shapes
that are more in line with the typical narrative word shapes used in
print etc. Like Michael says, if we were to have very highresolution
with excellent anti-aliasing, I would choose a serif font for body
content. Unfortunately we have low resolution with no anti-alias being
the default, majority view and for this, I feel arial wins due to it's
familiar rendering of word shapes. This is also why you don't tend to
see body content in 'Avant Garde' but you do see a lot in 'helvetica'
where the screen versions of these are, loosely, 'verdana' and 'arial'
respectivley (arial was ms's rendering of helvetica for screen and
verdana was the same but optimised for ultra low resolution,
non-antialiased. 

At the end of the day this probably says it all...

http://usability.gov/guidelines/fonts.html

http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi95/proceedings/intpost/tst_bdy.htm

In summary.. 

"Research shows no reliable differences in reading speed or user
preferences between 10-point Times Roman, Georgia serif fonts,
Helvetica, or Verdana sans serif font"

Although contrast did produce some differences :-

http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/AHNCUR.html

In this case it was noted that in no survey did black on white produce
the best response times. This was typically produced at lower contrasts,
although in these case the background was adjusted rather than the
foreground. On my monitor here (22" Iiyama CRT) black on white makes my
eyes water and I prefer a low contrast foreground. Perhaps I suffer from
a dyslexia type disorder, but I find 80% contrast so much more readable
than 100%. If it turns out I am the exception then I'll have to change
it but if what I suffer at 100% contrast is repeated for a large
percentage of the population then I'd be very reluctant to give in on
this point. 

Tim