Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls *Optometrist voice* "Better like this... or better like this?"

This is a follow up to my web design question over in the Techie section, but this time, I need general thoughts from a variety of people.

I've put up a prototype here .

I've got a few things I need to know. Mostly about the font menus. The way I've observed things so far:

Internet Explorer (at least the version I have) has this annoying habit of seeing them as dangerous content. It tries to block it, and you have to click the little security bar and tell it to allow the content. Fortunately, you only have to do this once per session. You tell it it's okay, and it accepts that on the next page, too, without needing to prompt you again. Until, that is, you close the browser and try to open the page again. Then it's the same thing. Tries to block, etc.

IE does, however, allow me to set a default font.

Firefox, OTOH, has no problem realizing that just changing a font doesn't pose much of a security risk. If I set a default font, though, it accepts that as overriding anything else. So the menu to change the font doesn't work.

You'll see all of this in action, BTW, since I put up two pages. The "left" page has a default font, the "right" page doesn't.

You can also see the results of that table thing Karen helped me with. (Thanks again, Karen. ) It allowed me to make the background images for both pages.

So, my questions are as follows:

1. What do you think of the font menus? Are the fun?
2. Are they worthwhile?
3. Do the font menus work for you?
4. On the "left" page (the one with the default font), can you still change the font? Or just the font size?
5. Is there something else you'd like to do with the fonts? Change color, for example?
6. What do you think of the available font sizes?
7. What browser are you using?

I'm hoping to hear from a variety of people with a variety of browsers.

The page, once again, is here . I'll be adding more stuff to the finished version, but this has enough for now.

Of course, if you have any other comments/thoughts/suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks.

Paul

This looks great to me Paul.

Not loading for me.

Looks good to me. I'm using IE6 on Win98SE. The only problem was that I couldn't change between Lucinda and Times, nothing happened on either page. But I was able to choose the other fonts on both pages.

Ah, I should read questions properly before I answer them!

Re the one about the font size: the range of font sizes was good, but I misread the question to read the range of fonts. They seemed pretty limited.

I said changing colour would be fun, but I guess that would depend on why your doing this in the first place. I can't really see why I'd want to do this.

Oh, and I'm using IE and Windows XP. Everything seemed to work for me.

Chris

Thanks for the votes and the responses, everybody! Very helpful.

Crazy Babe - Thanks. Glad to know you like.

Archbish, I'm not sure why it wouldn't load for you. Maybe a server glitch? Try again, maybe?

Karen, I'm confused by the problem you're having, and a little worried. I'd ask if you had Lucida Handwriting on your comp, but you obviously have Times New Roman. I mean, who doesn't? The script is the same, and the names are spelled right... Wierd.

Chris, thanks for the clarification. The font selection is limited, but that's mostly because I wasn't sure what else to put. I wanted the handwriting as the default, and a couple of other options in case it was hard for people to read. I'm also trying to stick to ones that are relatively common.

Chris and people in general:

What other fonts would you like?

Also, what colors would people like? About half of you said colors might be fun, but I wasn't sure which ones to put in.

As for why I'm doing it in the first place... I can't fully explain, but basically: Because it's fun and because I want to get it right. It started out with the font change, for the reason above. I thought it'd be a good feature, to make things more customizable and hopefully more readable.

I'm also confused to find that the prototype pages, using the same code, but with only different text, seem to have no trouble with FireFox, despite the fact that the real pages do. I can't figure out what the difference is. Oh well. There's always IE.

Anyway, thanks again, everyone. I just want to make this as good as it can be, and your responses have helped me do that.

Paul

I'm guessing that Karen may have an older version of Microsoft Office. Older Office versions I think don't have Lucinda as a font.

Possibly. This computer has Office 2000 on it. I apparently have Lucinda Console, but not Lucinda Handwriting. That would explain it. :-)

fav'rit fonts?

georgia has become my standard "I've got WP open and I'm writing a story" font. don't like times new roman. have come to hate it, in fact, for some odd reason....not sure why. can't stand courier new, either, because that's the font I'm mandated to stay in for work.

papyrus is another fun favorite! for effect, not for reading long things, though.

I actually only have a relatively small number of fonts to pick from, here.... hmmm.... --on my computer, that is. the list is longer--just don't remember em right now. I was in office max a little while ago and saw a laminated list of fonts they can print stuff in, and I was actually looking down the list and noting all of my old fav'rits!