Re: Fonts in validator pageChristoph Päper

Christoph Päper:

> Bertilo Wennergren:

> > Actually I meant leaving out "font-family" completely. Some
> > browsers have hard-coded settings for the generics, that the users
> > cannot change, and all too often those hard-wired settings are
> > pretty awful

> And those browsers (which?) use pretty fonts for text without any
> font-family set? NOIB hard to believe.

If you don't specify any font (no generic, nothing), then the browser 
will use the font setting the user has chosen. Those settings are often 
very easy to change for the users, and they will be as pretty as every 
user wishes. In e.g. Mozilla you can also change the settings for the 
generics, but in e.g. Microsoft Explorer or older Netscape browsers, 
there is no way to choose what should happen when the CSS says 
"font-family: serif" or "font-family: monospace". Some font chosen by 
the programmers will be used, and that's it.

That's why I believe that generic font-families can be harmful (against 
the received cargo-cult knowledge that says that something will go very 
wrong if we don't always specify some generic).

-- 
Bertilo Wennergren <bertilow@gmx.net> <http://www.bertilow.com>

Received on Friday, 13 December 2002 10:23:52 UTC