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Subject:Re: Website readability From:Michael Johnson <michaelj -at- OECMED -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 18 Aug 1998 09:44:46 -0600
Doug Max recently asked about the font and font color to use for maximum readability on scrolling web pages.
Our field service engineers use laptops to read service docs on CD. We've discovered through experimentation that sans serif fonts are the most readable, and that 13 points is about as small as we dare go. We do use some dark colors and bolding in headlines, notes, captions, etc., but we dodge the light pastels because you can't see them well enough to read them. Plain old body text is always black.
We use Helvetica for heads and body, partly because it ships with Acrobat, so we know everybody who has Acrobat Reader has that font. Although Times Roman also ships with Acrobat, we don't use it for anything on line because of the serifs. (They turn fuzzy.)
Hope this helps, Doug.
Mike Johnson
Michaej -at- oecmed -dot- com
Writer -at- wasatch -dot- com
Speaking for myself and not OEC Medical systems.