Re: Website readability

["Walker, Arlen P" <Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM>]

     "What's the best color, font (serif, or sans-serif), size for text to
     be easily readable on the web?"

Dark text on a light background. Sans-serif is to be preferred. DON'T
CHANGE THE COLORS OF LINKING TEXT! (Yes, I intended to shout that.)

People who browse the web have vision problems. All of us do, just some are
more serious than others. Browsers give the user a chance to use technology
to overcome poor eyesight by enlarging text. Then some know-it-all male
donkey of a web designer comes along and insists the text be too small for
comfortable reading.

Remember, people are different. If you print it too small on paper, your
reader can reach for a magnifying glass. The browser functions as the
reader's built-in automatic magnifying glass for web documents. Just who
the blazes is a web designer to take that magnifier away, anyway?

Remember, fonts render at different sizes on different platforms. Printers
know there are 72 points to the inch (nearest whole number). Disciples of
Gates believe there are 96 points to the inch; ergo fonts rendered on
heretic screens will be a different size than on orthodox ones.

Remember, users have be able to recognize your carefully crafted interface
before they can appreciate it. If you change the default link colors, the
users will suffer some cognitive dissonance while trying to identify the
appropriate controls in your interface. This will lead to an unsatisfying
visit.

Remember how the browser works. If you click on a link, you have to wait
for the page to be delivered. If you click on a scroll bar, the next page
of text is presented almost instantly. And most browsers will let you begin
reading while the text is still downloading, so the user won't have to wait
for the second section to download, but rather can be reading the first
section as soon as it arrives while the second downloads in the background.

Remember how users interact with the web. One of the important discoveries
Jakob Neilsen made is that people don't *read* web pages. They skim them,
looking for relevant information (including hypertext links). They also
don't mind clicking a scroll bar. What they *do* mind is waiting for the
next page to download.

Chunk your information, by all means. But don't chunk the information based
on the size of some hypothetical web page size. Chunk it based on logical
divisions of the text. Let the subject matter and *only* the subject matter
tell you where the chunks should be divided.

     My webmaster thinks that a navy blue "softens" things up, but I
     wonder if black isn't better because of its greater contrast.

Well, let's think this through, shall we? Despite the obvious psychological
effects (blue is a calming color):

When we read, we focus on the letters.
The CRT emits light in direct proportion to the lightness of the color (a
dark grey causes the CRT to emit less light than a light grey).
So light text on a dark background means our eyes will have to focus on the
absolute brightest spots on the screen.

I don't think so.

     Also, I think that Times Roman is easier to read than Ariel.  I
     welcome your opinions and/or reference to any research done on this.

On a high resolution output device, I'll agree. Unfortunately, computer
screens *aren't* high-resultion output devices. They're extremely low-res.
The readability of serif fonts goes down dramatically as the serifs
thicken. Take a look at your newspaper. Serif font for the body text, san-
serif for headlines, where the serifs would be thick because of the large
point size.


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
----------------------------------------------
In God we trust; all others must provide data.
----------------------------------------------
Opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.
If JCI had an opinion on this, they'd hire someone else to deliver it.

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=