Re: Useability and font selection

The usability requirement on fonts is that the page has to work
independent of font changes.  The individuals who need help from
fonts to read the screen know better than you or I what font
works for them.

to follow up on what Robert C. Neff said:

> Lastly, style sheets are good for an intranet or extranet - not
> for an internet.  We have identified our target audience and we
> are developing for the lowest common "browser" (Microsoft or
> Netscaep 2) and text based.  Therefore style sheets are not for
> us -darn!

I don't follow this logic.

Your required target is a set of browsers that will use different
fonts and layouts among them regardless of what you set in the
HTML.

So why tie yourself to a font indication in the HTML?  You can go
ahead and use style sheets to address the high end user
equipment.  Your selected font won't show up in some browsers.
It wasn't going to, anyway, in the ones you have been directed to
care about.

The broad usability of the pages depends on your diligence in
making sure that the font ultimately doesn't matter.  Look at the
pages in Lynx and listen to them in pwWebSpeak, and you will have
robust pages.  Then you can decorate to your heart's content, so
long as the words and the HTML structure that all browsers do
respond to are in order.

Al Gilman

Received on Tuesday, 10 February 1998 10:58:22 UTC