Does interface research indicate Arial is better than Verdana/Tahoma (for on screen reading) [closed]

Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.

Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.

Closed 7 years ago.

I know Google does A LOT of user interface/experience testing and I'm looking for any type of scientific research on User Experience when it comes to typefaces used on a monitor display.

As such, I'm going to use Google as an example.

Why doesn't Google use the typeface of Verdana or Tahoma (instead of helvetica/arial)?

Verdana/Tahoma were both typefaces primarily designed for the screen (and are much easier to read on the screen than helvetica/arial).

I'm curious to know if there is any type of computer science research indicating that Helvetica / Arial on the screen is better to use than other typefaces.

**Please note this is a computer science interaction research question instead of just a subjective web development question.

UPDATE:

People have been mentioning in the answers that Verdana/Tahoma are typically not available on Linux. But that answer doesn't make sense because CSS allows for this exact situation (of non-available fonts through the use of hierarchical typeface naming).

For example, in CSS you'd do

font-family:Verdana, sans-serif;

meaning - if the user has "verdana" us it, otherwise default to the system sans-serif typeface.

UPDATE 2

Google is already font stacking on the front page of Google.com using a Windows only font.

Per the CSS on google.com, they have:

font-family:arial,sans-serif

So all of the answers related to google not using certain fonts because of licensing issues, or not available on non-Windows machines, or filesize of the page are all wrong. Obviously, from the pasted code above, Google is explicitly defining a Windows only font (Arial) in such a way that increases the overall page size.

As such, my original question still stand: is any type of computer science research indicating that Helvetica / Arial on the screen is better to use than other typefaces.

**Please note this is a computer science interaction research question instead of just a subjective web development question.

задан jackio_e 23 November 2010 в 19:18

0 ответов

Другие вопросы по тегам:

user-interface fonts usability user-interaction

Does interface research indicate Arial is better than Verdana/Tahoma (for on screen reading) [closed]

0 ответов

Похожие вопросы: