So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica? • Hacker News Board

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#181

Post by drivers99 » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 10:35 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #48

jongold wrote: post #2

Ruining the game for everyone; two things I love about Helvetica — Terminals at right angles to the stroke. http://c.jon.gd/image/3Q0y2u323j3C . Arial looks particularly sloppy with jaunty terminals. It is possible to have a similar grotesque sans-serif feel with offset terminals (see Univers & Akzidenz Grotesk) but they're a crucial part of what give Helvetica its character. - The uppercase R. Has a really strong le…

I immediately got 17/20, missing only the ones where there were no lower case characters. How do you distinguish between in these 3 cases? http://imgur.com/a/NOLoI

The "C" (flat terminals) and "R" (straight vs not straight) in the THE NORTH FACE are different.

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#182

Post by calinet6 » Tue, Jan 22, 2013, 2:23 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #115

rquantz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that is what he's trying to say. You don't use Arial because it terminates at right angles, you use it because it feels different.

You use it because it's the only option you have under Windows.

Actually, you don't use it.

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#183

Post by mynameisvlad » Sat, Jan 26, 2013, 8:04 AM UTC

e1ven wrote: post #143

mynameisvlad wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is horrible advice. The difference in the fonts will make your site look completely different to people using different OSes.

As it should! ;) Lately we've developed this fetish for sites being pixel-perfect across any display. The web was designed to decouple the way a site was designed from the way it's displayed. To allow it to reflow, and people to use their own designs. If you really want pixel-perfect layout, why not just use bitmaps and imagemaps ;)

When you have the ability to define custom fonts, and there's great fonts out there such as Open Sans which are supported by a whole whack of users, it doesn't make sense not to use that hand have a unified look across browsers and Operating Systems.

Note that I never said that it shouldn't be decoupled, or that people shouldn't use their own designs. But if you want people to see your site as you intended, I'd for sure want them to see it with the exact font I choose, not some close alternative.

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#184

Post by mynameisvlad » Sat, Jan 26, 2013, 8:05 AM UTC

notJim wrote: post #156

mynameisvlad wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is horrible advice. The difference in the fonts will make your site look completely different to people using different OSes.

No it won't, the difference between Helvetica and Arial at small sizes is barely noticeable. Furthermore, most Windows users won't have Helvetica anyway, and if they do, it looks totally broken. The appearance does matter more for display text (logos, headings, etc.), but you're using font-face for those anyway.

Then why not use font-face for everything and have a font which can be viewed across operating systems like OpenSans?