What is the best font for a set of instructions?

I'm creating articles on vinyl installation for my website and I was wondering which fonts and font sizes should be used to make them easiest to read? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Arial, size 12

 

font: 11px verdana combined with line-height: 16px could also work..

 

Yeah, verdana is known to be one of the most readable fonts.

 

The best idea is, go to google and search for Vinyl Installation, Visit different websites and find the one best suited
The font I use in most part of my websites is

font:normal 12px Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;

Code (markup):

 

From a designers point of view, two types of font. serif and san-serifs. Anything in the the san-serif family is good for typography (hence readability) on a webpage. Verdana falls in the san-serif family.

 

That's not really a question that anyone can answer for you, without seeing the actual content of your page. Are the instructions an ordered, step-by-step set? Do they act as a caption to an instructional photo/diagram? Are they accompanied by images? How are they fit into the prose of the page?

Generally, look for methods to separate the instructions from the rest of the prose; make it easy for the eye to find. Use margins, font-family, font-size, numbering (ordered list), etc. to create separation. Don't fail to consider mono-space fonts.

cheers,

gary

 

I agree with @kk5st, I think it completely depends on the content and how it is presented on the page with other elements. I tend to use accessibility checklists to make sure the content on the page is as accessible to all audiences as possible.

 

Interesting to see a bump of a 12 year old thread. MORE interesting to see all the derps of that time talking about using PX in illegibly tiny and useless sizes.

 

Oops! I saw this thread popup on a main page and thought I'd throw my two cents in!

 

Quite a few people made the same mistake. I don't know why they keep showing super old threads as "popular". They are popular somewhere, I guess.

 

In a lot of instances I do NOT want the fonts to be auto scalable. 14px - 15px is perfect for any device. It's quite readable even on small cell phones. I understand, not everyone's eyesight is 20/20, but nothing is preventing them from zooming in on it, if need be. Any device can do that (unless someone still uses IE6). I really do not get the whole em vs px argument. What's easier to write: 1px or 0.063em? It looks like more code for nothing. Plus, em is not consistent across all browsers and devices.

 

Whilst it's too tiny for me and mine, sending me for the zoom where PX metric layouts invariably break.

Given that there is ZERO fixed relationship between EM and pixels, why would you even say 1px in the first place unless it was for something you DON'T want scaling, which is occasionally acceptable on text-shadow or border. BTW, assuming a 16px machine 1px == 0.0625em, not 0.063. Though on my computers it's 0.05, and on my media center it's 0.41666~.

That's kind of the point of it. IF you're even THINKING in pixels, you're probably thinking WRONG from the start!

If you design for elastic, it tends to be less prone to breaking if zoom is used, because it was designed for it from the start. Something PX most certainly is not.

1) as if pixels per inch is?

2) on my Bluboo and my Cubot, a lot of those 14px sites are pretty useless crap. Not everyone lights money on fire for no good reason with crApple and Slambung.

3) That's the POINT. It's not even supposed to be consistent. It's just supposed to work!

Generally I find EM easier to work with in the long run because fractions of the base font-size tend to just result in cleaner layouts. Multiples of 1EM for padding for example most always looks great.

... and it's a WCAG violation. Sure, there's a small section that says PX can be used if you have control over what UA's the visitor is going to use -- but this is the Internet, that makes said exception as utterly irrelevant and inapplicable to reality as the scientific concept of entropy.

Entropy only applies to closed systems. So far as we know, there's no such thing. Order from disorder is a function of natural laws.

As Dan said over a decade ago (wow, it's been that long?) This is the Internet, the only thing you know about who will visit your website is that you cannot possibly know who will visit your website. So dot the bloody t's and cross the i's!.. or... something.