Any chance of a User Setting for default font?

The font size is already in User Control Panel > Profile. If you prefer a different font (e.g., Verdana), most browsers let you override them (Firefox: Tools > Options > Content > Fonts & Colors > Advanced; Internet Explorer: Tools > Internet Options > Fonts > Ignore font styles specified on webpages).

HB wrote:The font size is already in User Control Panel > Profile. If you prefer a different font (e.g., Verdana), most browsers let you override them (Firefox: Tools > Options > Content > Fonts & Colors > Advanced; Internet Explorer: Tools > Internet Options > Fonts > Ignore font styles specified on webpages).

No such option on ie6.

I prefer to set things in ONE place, so no matter where I view H-B, the experience is the same. Users of umpteen machines should not have to change settings... owners of the machines sometimes get a tad testy

Eh, I'm not aware of other websites that include font selection among the visitor's choices. But I am curious: What favorite font prompted your question? The previous forum was Verdana.

HB wrote:Eh, I'm not aware of other websites that include font selection among the visitor's choices. But I am curious: What favorite font prompted your question? The previous forum was Verdana.

Don't have a favorite font, but whatever this one is [Trebuchet MS??] looks very poor. The character shapes are not easier to read and the intercharacter spacing is too tight.

I program in 9pt Courier New @ 1280x1024. It's easy to read, just not sexy.

Hmmm, interesting topic.

HB has the following fonts definition for .content:
font-family: "Lucida Grande","Trebuchet MS",Verdana,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;

"Lucida Grande" and Helvetica are not present on my Vista machine

"Trebuchet MS" is readable, but indeed a strange choice.

For example, microsoft site uses: font-family: Tahoma,Verdana,Segoe,sans-serif;
ibm.com: font-family: verdana,arial,sans-serif

chelya wrote:"Lucida Grande" and Helvetica are not present on my Vista machine...

I asked the phpBB style developers and they say it's a Mac font. I shouldn't be surprised, graphics artists are often Mac users. Anyway, according to Wikipedia, the equivalent on Windows is Lucida Sans Unicode and the board now reflects it, though honestly I cannot tell the difference on my Vista or Windows laptops.

As a matter of history, the old board used { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif }. The current board prefaces them with { font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", "Trebuchet MS" }. Looking at them side-by-side, the Verdana characters are straighter (e.g,. a lowercase "l" is a perfectly straight line, not a line with a slight curl on the end). The kerning looks slightly tighter, probably to account for the end curls.

And there you go.

New font:


Old font:

Gotta say I love the topic creation date under the topic.

If only the Reply Edit window could lose its crummy Trebuchet MS font!

chelya wrote:Dan,

Is it possible to adjust RSS to show new topics only rather then generating messages for each updated topic?
People post a lot - this generates a ton of rss activity rendering it pretty much useless.

The migration "broke" the RSS feed settings from the old board, but now they should be back in order. I've added a new feed similar to what you describe above. Specifically the available feeds are:

http://www.home-barista.com/forums/rss.xml - general feed for all posts in all forums
http://www.home-barista.com/forums/tips-and-techniques-rf2.xml ...
http://www.home-barista.com/forums/knockbox-rf14.xml - general feed for a single forum

And the new one:

http://www.home-barista.com/forums/news/rss.xml - only new topics.

Currently the RSS feed will update only once every 4 hours. That keeps the load on the server down and avoids filling a newsreader with duplicates since only the last post of a series is posted. The first group of feeds are available from the address bar of most browsers (e.g., Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 - just click the "beacon" icon). I haven't added the news one to the public list of RSS feeds until members have time to give feedback. In the meantime, simply add the URL to your reader manually.

chelya wrote:A better approach to monitoring activity:
- watch new topics via rss
- subscribe for email updates on the topics of interest

That approach brings its own problems. Sending out lots of e-mail notifications risks exceeding the maximum number of SMTP relays the ISP allows per day (long story).

cafeIKE wrote:If only the Reply Edit window could lose its crummy Trebuchet MS font!

Maybe it's your monitor. I recently upgraded to the Samsung 245BW (LCD 24", resolution 1900x1200). The fonts look pretty good on it. I also test on a 1400x1050 (Windows XP) and occasionally confirm the site is navigable on 1024x768.

HB wrote:And the new one:
news/rss.xml - only new topics.

Dan, you are the best! Thank you.

HB wrote:That approach brings its own problems. Sending out lots of e-mail notifications risks exceeding the maximum number of SMTP relays the ISP allows per day (long story).

WOW. We have our own smtp server at work - I have never thought about this...

HB wrote:Maybe it's your monitor...

If it were, then the topic page would read poorly as well. As ONLY the edit window looks bad....

BTW, I have more than a dozen monitors from 1024 to 1620. The edit window font is lacking on all of them: 2k, XP, X, ie6, ie7, Firefox. FWIW, it looks best on the lowest resolution monitors.

I disagree with the designers ideas that adding little curls improves readability. We don't read a letter at a time, but by recognizing the word pattern. The reduced kerning and letter similarities detract from pattern recognition. Interestingly some examples of images of Trebuchet on the web are far more legible than that used here. All have more intraletter spacing.

cafeIKE wrote:If it were, then the topic page would read poorly as well. As ONLY the edit window looks bad....

Here's a snapshot of it on Firefox. It doesn't look significantly different than the other pages to me:

HB wrote:Here's a snapshot of it on Firefox. It doesn't look significantly different than the other pages to me:

Here are two snapshots of the comment on 2k / ie6 @1280
Page Text:

Edit Text:


Examine at the word look. It is doubly difficult to recognize in the edit text.

Ah, I see your point. Evidently it must be a Windows 2000 thing because obviously it doesn't look like that for either Windows XP or Vista. Along the same lines, I created this side-by-side animated comparison of the Lucida/Verdana fonts:



The regular style Lucida looks fine to me, but the italic is harder to read. Given that the old board's font selection went for almost three years without complaint, I've switched the main font to the same as before the migration.

HB wrote:Here's a snapshot of it on Firefox. It doesn't look significantly different than the other pages to me:

Here are two snapshots of the comment on XP / ie7 @ 1280 :

Page Text:

Edit Text:


Seems the same as 2k, no?

cafeIKE wrote:Seems the same as 2k, no?

No, the first looks thin and spindly. The second looks fine to me.

HB wrote:No, the first looks thin and spindly. The second looks fine to me.

That's an artifact of the capture method and the JPEG editor difference on the machines.
The font shape and the kerning are the same. Those are the issues that cause legibility problems.

*Shrug*

I use PNG format to avoid JPEG lossy issues; the second screenshot looks fine to me. In any case, I've removed "Trebuchet MS" from the input area. It should default to Verdana.