Suggestion

[rich]

Thomas,
I think the present font settings appear too condensed. I think Arial is a bit easier on my eyes. However, you may have to consider the amount of space this setting requires.

An Experiment:

A : Reading this font is not easy on the eye


B : Reading this font is not easy on the eye

C :Reading this font is not easy on the eye

D :Reading this font is not easy on the eye

E :Reading this font is not easy on the eye

F :Reading this font is not easy on the eye

Which is easiest? My personal preference would be C

[Thomas Knierim]

Richie: I think the present font settings appear too condensed. I think Arial is a bit easier on my eyes. However, you may have to consider the amount of space this setting requires.

The font used on thebigview.com is Georgia 11 and 12 points which was chosen for aesthetic reasons as well as for legibility. Although Arial is a very clean and easy-to-read font, studies have shown that legibility and reading speed of serif fonts are generally better than non-serif fonts, which is why almost every newspaper in the world uses a serif font, such as Times Roman. Additional factors that affect legibility are font size, line spacing, contrast, and the avoidance of "rivers" that appear in justified text. These design principles were taken into consideration when creating the layout for thebigview.com.

One problem though is introduced by the use of CSS (cascaed style sheets). You cannot enlarge text using the "view/text size" menu option of your browser. Since thebigview.com uses CSS fonts instead of HTML, the problem exists for thebigview.com as well as for every other site using CSS, which means probably the majority of websites on the Internet. If your monitor has a very high resolution (1200 px and more), or if your eyesight is not so good, you may want to try a browser that can zoom pages in and out, such as Opera, or Mozilla and Konqueror on Linux. These browsers are available for free and can be downloaded from the Internet.

Cheers, Thomas