Font size in posting field

[kirkmc]

I use Consolas, which is a very nicely crafted font. But why can't you just define it as "monospace", then each browser will use the monospace font that the user has defined?

I think because most people are not tech savvy enough to edit their own style sheet, nor have defined their own preferred monospace font. fwiffo's idea is not to define a default that will basically be courier or courier new.

I frankly don't mind in the slightest, and use courier new quite happily, but I agree with the principle of trying to ensure that people get the best possible overall experience with requiring expertise to get it. Not trying to say one idea is better than the other, and I think Consolas is very elegant, but just defining the font monospace is not the simple fix it sounds due to the default for many users.

But it's not Courier; it's Andale Mono, which is a hideous font.

Why isn't putting "monospace" good enough? Everyone will have at least one monospace font?

[kirkmc]

When designing web pages you have to target the lowest common denominator in many ways. Most people (90+%) will have their fonts set to their web-browser default, which is usually Courier. I want to make sure things look right on 90% of systems. The <10% of users who've customized their fonts are probably already savvy enough to write a user-specified style-sheet if they really care that much. I mean, I could specify just "serif" and "sans-serif" for all the fonts on the site and let everyone decide what fonts they want for everything, but what would be the point? I might as well tell everyone to go write their own theme.

That said, I'll add Consolas to the stack, because it is a good font (I didn't pick it initially because it's not as widely available as Andale Mono). I realize Mac font rendering is a lot different (trust me, I deal with it every day) but I'm surprised Andale Mono looks that bad. It looks great in Windows and Linux, and it has all the useful qualities you'd want in a monospace font (1, l, I, O, 0, etc. look very distinct).

See my screenshot earlier in this thread; the biggest problem is that it is very "squat" on the Mac; definitely not high on readability. What you show above does look a lot better.

[dfan]

Why isn't putting "monospace" good enough? Everyone will have at least one monospace font?

Because of a bug in Safari: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3331#p3331