Life In 19x19

Sometime recently (in the last day or two) the editing window stopped being monospace for me.

I use Firefox 3.6 and have "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above" unchecked.

I assume something about the text entry field has been changed so that it specifies a font by hand (which my browser ignores) and omits the higher-level specification that it be a monospace font. I'm no HTML expert, so that's as much as I can guess...

Yes, that's necessary for compatibility with Safari. Apparently Safari absurdly makes text smaller if you specify "monospace". It irritates me that I have to follow a bad practice by not specifying it, but such is the nature of making things cross-browser compatible. Does your system not have any of the alternative monospace fonts I specified?

fwiffo wrote:Yes, that's necessary for compatibility with Safari. Apparently Safari absurdly makes text smaller if you specify "monospace". It irritates me that I have to follow a bad practice by not specifying it, but such is the nature of making things cross-browser compatible. Does your system not have any of the alternative monospace fonts I specified?

It does, but I have "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above" unchecked,

If there's no alternative on the website side for compatibility reasons, I'll look into whether I can override the lifein19x19.com stylesheet locally.

Maybe this suggested workaround would work compatibly?

http://getsatisfaction.com/typekit/topi ... _too_small

dfan wrote:If there's no alternative on the website side for compatibility reasons, I'll look into whether I can override the lifein19x19.com stylesheet locally.

The firefox plugin "Stylish" will do the trick. You have to know about CSS, though, unless some kind admin helps with that task *wink*

If you're setting your own font in your browser, there is nothing I can do to the stylesheet here to fix that... It shouldn't have been working before either.

dfan wrote:Maybe this suggested workaround would work compatibly?

http://getsatisfaction.com/typekit/topi ... _too_small

I will try that, but I suspect I'll be getting complaints from Safari users again.

Well, it works great for me again. Here's hoping that it works on Safari too.

Sorry, I missed this from before:

fwiffo wrote:If you're setting your own font in your browser, there is nothing I can do to the stylesheet here to fix that... It shouldn't have been working before either.

Well, even if I have it set to use my own fonts, it respects "font-family: monospace" and chooses my monospace override font instead of my proportional override font.

fwiffo wrote:If you're setting your own font in your browser, there is nothing I can do to the stylesheet here to fix that... It shouldn't have been working before either.

dfan wrote:Maybe this suggested workaround would work compatibly?

http://getsatisfaction.com/typekit/topi ... _too_small

I will try that, but I suspect I'll be getting complaints from Safari users again.

Looks the same; an ugly monospace font (assuming that you've already tried it).

kirkmc wrote:

fwiffo wrote:If you're setting your own font in your browser, there is nothing I can do to the stylesheet here to fix that... It shouldn't have been working before either.

dfan wrote:Maybe this suggested workaround would work compatibly?

http://getsatisfaction.com/typekit/topi ... _too_small

I will try that, but I suspect I'll be getting complaints from Safari users again.

Looks the same; an ugly monospace font (assuming that you've already tried it).

Are there still problems with the font size? The monospace font was a choice for editing the posts mainly because of its use for editing diagrams. Sounds like most people use this and much prefer having the posting field be in a monospace font for that reason.

schultz wrote:
Are there still problems with the font size? The monospace font was a choice for editing the posts mainly because of its use for editing diagrams. Sounds like most people use this and much prefer having the posting field be in a monospace font for that reason.

I don't think "most people" post diagrams; I don't. In addition, it overrides my browser's monospace font, and displays in an ugly font; the basic font defined is Andale Mono, which may look good on Windows, but on my Mac, it's very bad. What if it were simple defined as monospace, rather than forcing a specific monospace font on people?

Well "monospace" is usually Courier or Courier New which looks like dog meat and has serifs which doesn't match anything. Which monospace fonts do you suggest? If they're only common on Macs, we can put them at the front of the stack and it can look good for everyone.

It's got to be a monospace font though. If you really want a proportional font you can set up a personal stylesheet in your browser.

fwiffo wrote:Well "monospace" is usually Courier or Courier New which looks like dog meat and has serifs which doesn't match anything. Which monospace fonts do you suggest? If they're only common on Macs, we can put them at the front of the stack and it can look good for everyone.

It's got to be a monospace font though. If you really want a proportional font you can set up a personal stylesheet in your browser.

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?

kirkmc wrote: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.

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).