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View Full Version : Font weight (or boldness)



Spider
04-17-2011, 11:26 AM
I notice that both Firefox and Safari have a very light font at their basic settings - "straight out of the box" - so light that one can almost count the dots that make up the characters. For me, that makes them difficult to read. I imagine there are settings to adjust that and I would, if I were to use either as my favorite browser. (I don't, so I have no need to change the settings.)

My question is, though -- Do you use either Firefox or Safari as your favorite browser in the basic settings or have you adjusted the weight of the font to suit your own preference?

2nd. Question: Do you think the majority of Firefox or Safari users use the browsers unaltered or with adjusted settings?

Harold Mansfield
04-17-2011, 01:10 PM
I use Firefox and I don't notice a difference in the font weight or how dark they are. I have my font set at 'New Times Roman' and the size set at '16px'.

I even pulled up a web page on each and put them side by side using default settings for IE and Safari (I haven't changed anything on them) , and don't see any noticeable difference concerning the font weight. Except for the known differences on each browser, all 3 pages look pretty much the same to me.

I can't really answer the second question about who sets their computer how, and there's probably not any stats on people's personal preferences. I would assume default settings. Anyone that changes them, knows how to change them back or has them how they want them to view pages how they want to see them.

I personally don't do anything special to try and accommodate for what kind of special setting someone has their browser set to.

Spider
04-17-2011, 11:44 PM
Hmm. I notice a considerable difference, and I don't remember changing the settings of IE on either of my computers. Glad to know you don't write your code to accommodate any difference in font weight.

Business Attorney
04-18-2011, 08:23 AM
I don't notice any difference between IE and Firefox either, Frederick. I don't use Safari.

Spider
04-18-2011, 09:31 AM
Interesting. Perhaps it's a characteristic of the computer - I see the difference on my old computer - an HP Pavilion with Windows XP

Still, glad I don't have to worry about it and we don't have to do any extra coding to accommodate.

uwwandrew
06-04-2011, 03:56 PM
I do not see any difference either. I don't muck with the settings but I do customize my google home page

tylerhutchinson
06-04-2011, 05:59 PM
I do not see a difference at all.

NineDesign
08-08-2011, 03:02 PM
I notice that both Firefox and Safari have a very light font at their basic settings - "straight out of the box" - so light that one can almost count the dots that make up the characters. For me, that makes them difficult to read. I imagine there are settings to adjust that and I would, if I were to use either as my favorite browser. (I don't, so I have no need to change the settings.)

My question is, though -- Do you use either Firefox or Safari as your favorite browser in the basic settings or have you adjusted the weight of the font to suit your own preference?

2nd. Question: Do you think the majority of Firefox or Safari users use the browsers unaltered or with adjusted settings?

I use Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, yikes! Only because I need to test my code in every browser to ensure everything remains consistent. However, I do prefer Firefox, probably just out of habit. I guess I don't really notice that the font is really light. What's your screen resolution? That may have something to do with it. I believe the FF defaults are Helvetica at 15, with no weight specified.

To the second part – I'd say most people are using them without changing the settings. Depending on the webpage you're viewing though, there's a little CSS trick that designers and developers use that resets browser defaults and rebuilds them. So in the end, it may depend on the webpage itself rather than the browser.

technowonder
02-01-2012, 05:11 PM
I prefer Firefox over Safari. The built in Safari dev tool is good but I feel that the Firefox Firebug Firebug (http://getfirebug.com/) is just ace!


I prefer to leave my browser settings as defaul rather than change to suit my own preference because I think most people leave it at the default, so I want to see what end users of a website I make will see rather than my own preferences.

vangogh
02-01-2012, 05:29 PM
If you run Windows, you probably won't like Safari. On a Mac it's best of breed though. Have you tried Chrome? It usually outperforms everything on the Windows side. Personally I like the Webkit Inspector tools in Safari and Chrome better than Firebug. Same concept and both do the same basic things. For whatever reason I find Webkit Inspector easier to work with. Opera added a similar set of tools called Dragonfly. I haven't played with them as much as the other two, but they look pretty good.