font choices

Is there a 'best practices' way of deciding what fonts to use for
differing parts of a web page? Is it better for body text to be a
specific font or font style and then headers to be something else?

Is there a list of web safe fonts and an example of what they look like,
some kind of a reference sheet? I am not happy with the way my h1 - h3
fonts look on a page and would like to avoid going the route of some
kind of text replacement technique.

Guess that I am a bit font/design challenged (among other things)...

Thanks,
Todd

Re: font choices

In article , Leupi
wrote:

> Is there a 'best practices' way of deciding what fonts to use for
> differing parts of a web page?

No.

--
dorayme

Re: font choices

Leupi wrote:

>Is there a 'best practices' way of deciding what fonts to use for
>differing parts of a web page? Is it better for body text to be a
>specific font or font style and then headers to be something else?
>
>Is there a list of web safe fonts and an example of what they look like,
>some kind of a reference sheet? I am not happy with the way my h1 - h3
>fonts look on a page and would like to avoid going the route of some
>kind of text replacement technique.
>
>Guess that I am a bit font/design challenged (among other things)...
I found "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design"

very helpful in choosing fonts, colours and other aspects of web page
design.

Re: font choices

Scripsit David Segall:

> I found "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design"
>
> very helpful in choosing fonts, colours and other aspects of web page
> design.

Let me see... the URL doesn't look particular beautiful to me. The URL
_is_ part of a page's beauty.

Now, the page contains tiny text in bold (bolding just tends to make it
uglier)...

But maybe you are referring to the _book_ advertized in that lame way.
Well, it's not the book author's fault, as a rule - I have little if any
impact on the visual way my books are advertized.

On the other hand, it doesn't make a positive impression either.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Re: font choices

On Apr 6, 10:29 am, Leupi wrote:
> Is there a 'best practices' way of deciding what fonts to use for
> differing parts of a web page?

Google "website fonts best use" you will be blessed with a ton of
opinions

Re: font choices

On Apr 6, 1:08 pm, David Segall wrote:
> I found "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design"

Which only proves "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder."

Re: font choices

On 6 Apr, 18:08, David Segall wrote:

> I found "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design"
>
> very helpful in choosing fonts, colours and other aspects of web page
> design.

That's a book I'd love to read, because I sorely need such a thing.

However from looking at their own site, I'm not inclined to trust
their judgement enough to spend moneey on it. Far too many people who
really shouldn't be let anywhere near web design (frequently skilled
and talented paper designers) have written books and stuck similar
titles onto them, when actually they're more like a worst-practice
guide to web design.

Has anyone read / reviewed this for real? Good techniques or bad?

Re: font choices

On Apr 7, 6:58 am, Andy Dingley wrote:
> Has anyone read / reviewed this for real? Good techniques or bad?

Did you go to the author's website?

http://www.principlesofbeautifulwebdesign.com/layout/

If you mouse over "Layout" I believe you will not order the book.

Re: font choices

On 7 Apr, 13:03, Travis Newbury wrote:

> Did you go to the author's website?
>
> http://www.principlesofbeautifulwebdesign.com/layout/
>
> If you mouse over "Layout" I believe you will not order the book.

Well you're right - except that it wasn't the rather amusing rollover
on Layout that did it, it was the gross failure when I tried to re-
size font size.

>> body {font:normal 11pt/15pt
certainly didn't help.

Re: font choices

Andy Dingley wrote:

>On 6 Apr, 18:08, David Segall wrote:
>
>> I found "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design"
>>
>> very helpful in choosing fonts, colours and other aspects of web page
>> design.
>
>That's a book I'd love to read, because I sorely need such a thing.
>
>However from looking at their own site, I'm not inclined to trust
>their judgement enough to spend moneey on it. Far too many people who
>really shouldn't be let anywhere near web design (frequently skilled
>and talented paper designers) have written books and stuck similar
>titles onto them, when actually they're more like a worst-practice
>guide to web design.
>
>Has anyone read / reviewed this for real?
I read it from cover to cover "for real" which is why I recommended
it. I'm a computer programmer and although I believe that I can
distinguish good from bad aesthetic design I had no idea how to
achieve it. I found the book illuminating because it took apart design
into elements I could understand in five chapters titled Layout and
Composition, Colour, Texture, Typography and Imagery. Each chapter
includes conventional "rules" and why you might break them. The book
includes some reference material including URLs such as
http://www.wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html.
> Good techniques or bad?
I can't judge that. I can only accept what they say and my judgment of
the sites they use as examples. I would appreciate a critique from a
talented designer.

I believe a talent for aesthetic design and a talent for computer
programming are likely to be mutually exclusive. I don't disagree with
the critics of the book's web site but I think that a great web site
designer who also has an encyclopedic knowledge of W3C specs would be
inundated with work and would be too busy to post here or write a
book.

I don't have any association with Sitepoint but they happen to be
located in my hometown of Melbourne, Australia. If anyone feels like
trying a book on the basis of their 30 day money back guarantee and
they have a problem with the refund I will camp on Sitepoint's door
step until it is resolved in exchange for a more expert review than I
can provide.