HTML Font Tips
Web designers are always tempted to use the fancy looking fonts while designing a web page. The general feeling among the web designers is that fancier the font the more attractive it will be to visitors and it is more likely that they will stay at your web page once they've reached there. But most of the times it is not true instead the reverse is true. Since most people visit a web page because they are interested in the information that is available there, either in the form of an article or maybe it's a product or service. To dig out the desired information they need to go through the matter posted there on the site that may require them to navigate through a number of pages to find the product or service that they are looking for. Therefore last thing any visitor wants to do is to battle with the font on the page because it is quite attractive but at the same time difficult to read.
There are several factors included in the designing process of the font that make fonts easy or hard to read and each one of the factors is equally important. Fonts are designed to have many properties but the most important of these are type, size and color. Usually the type of font refers to the display of the font characters and the most common fonts used for the designing of the web pages are Verdana, Ariel and Times New Roman because they are the simplest of the lot and easy to read. The designing of these fonts is plain and simple. There is nothing fancy about them as opposed to a font like, say, Black Adder ITC, which may look real cool but they are not easy to read. Maybe for a word or two, there is no problem. But if a whole page of Black Adder ITC fonts could become a reading nightmare for a visitor to your site.
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Now, suppose your site displays articles on various topics and it would be okay to have some words using that font, such as headings and the first word of each paragraph. But the majority of your text should be in easy to read fonts like Verdana. This way you will be able to capture the flavor of artistic look you want to provide in your pages and still give your readers an easy to read experience. Next is the font size. It is another important issue, everybody do not have 6/6 vision and at the same time you don't want the fonts on your page to be too small so that your visitors have a difficult time reading the material on the web page. A good size for a paragraph font is about 12 to 14 point (Verdana, Ariel and Times New Roman). You may keep the headings a little bigger between 16 and 20 points. By keeping the size of your font within normal parameters you can provide your visitors with the easy reading of your web page.
If we do not discuss about the color then we may loose out another important factor that plays a vital role in the readability of your web page. A light colored font on a light colored background like pink on yellow or light yellow on light pink always present before the visitors a great difficulty in reading the matter posted on the site and such combination of the font color and background drive the visitors away from your site. Your font color and the background color of the page should be in contrast to each other, like black on white or white on black or red on yellow etc. The greater the contrast the easier it will be for your visitors to read the matter posted on your site making it popular within no time.
You may keep these simple suggestions in mind to assure your visitors of the most pleasant experience possible while visiting your website..