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Comment by cpeterso | Hacker News Reader

I prefer Helvetica Neue (1983); its spacing and curves are a little more relaxed than traditional Helvetica. Plus, Helvetica is notorious for being rendered poorly on Windows web browsers. Since Windows does not have a Helvetica Neue (unless the user has installed an Adobe design application), you can avoid Helvetica on Windows with a CSS font stack like:

  font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;

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I don't understand, Helvetica Neue renders awfully at body-text sizes on computer displays. Unless you need the light weights, use Arial. It's Helvetica made to look good on computers under 16px.

  font-family: Arial, sans-serif;

16px is proper body-text size.

"Proper". I agree with Oliver Reichenstein's argument[1], but Google does 13px and it's fine. The font-size in most desktop apps is less than 16px. Human's are adaptable. 16px is just more comfortable.

[1]: http://ia.net/blog/100e2r

I've had some success with removing specific fonts entirely:

  font-family: sans-serif;

You get Helvetica on Mac, Arial on Windows and various other default fonts on other platforms. Users can also pick their own font via browser settings.

For pixel-perfect alignment, you need to deal with some minor size differences between the fonts, but pixel-perfect design is not really achievable in many designs anyway.

Unfortunately, Helvetica Neue also renders poorly on Windows web browsers. It's a problem that I have been seeing a lot lately, especially with the popularity of Twitter Bootstrap. I understand that being a Windows user with Helvetica/Helvetica Neue installed is not very common, but when a website has an unreadable font I immediately leave it.

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