[SOLVED] Ideal Font / Size?

Hi all,

This probably seems a really basic question, but I am working on an intranet site where the primary users will be on 800x600 or 1024 x 768.

Can anyone suggest the best font / size for this?

The background colour is white, and the text colour black or dark blue.

All suggestions welcomed!

Thanks

Ben

Arial (or Helvetica) is a no-brainer. It is used by nearly all professional companies regardless of resolution, and is considered to be clear, and easy to read.

The best size is usually 13.2px-13.6px for regular reading. For text that you want to be smaller, 11px is usually sufficient. For headings, 15.4px - 16.8px is good.

Ed

I couldn't agree more fully with Ed. I would choose them too.

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Marc
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11px is a perfect reading font.

I agree with Arial. But I suggest using 12px for regular text.

It's true.

Thanks,
Ed

OK, if you can't read 12px font, use 14px! All that decimal crap for fonts will confuse you!

Ehemmm!

lol..

I would think the exact same thing, but in the survey, people said that the font at 12.3px was hard to read, while the one at 12.4px wasn't - hehe.

It was this crowd - www.redsky.ie
I'm not sure how many they surveyed, but well over 200,000 anyway.

Ed

200? I think a useful survey would need at least 1 billion people! The world's online population is huge, 200 is nothing!

200,000 - It was a web survey!

I agree with you though - The web is a big place. However though, to be considered an accurate survey, only a quarter of a percent of the total amount of users of any given thing have to be surveyed.

If 200,000 was a quarter than 800000000 is the total of internet users.
Therefore, it is considered to be an accurate survey - there is no possible way of surveying 1 billion people. Useful, oh yes.

Ed

Thanks everyone for your comments. Have adjusted it to Arial and the sizes suggested - and it looks much clearer!

Thanks again - and Happy New Year...!

Glad that it looks better.

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Cheers!

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Marc
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Using em's is an important thing. There is no "Ideal Font Size," however. Look at your market, for starters. If you're developing a website geared towards senior citizens, then you're obviously not going to want to use anything smaller than 14 pixels. If it's for teens, you can scrape by with 11px, but I'd say it's a good idea to stick with 12-13 pixel sized fonts in the sans-serif category. Move it up when you're thinking serifs, scripts, monospaced or narrow fonts.