Utente:Goroppon/Sandbox2

Goroppon/Sandbox2
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Stile	Sans-serif
Data di creazione	1996
Disegnatore	Matthew Carter
Produttore	Monotype
Esempio
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Il Verdana è un font sans-serif altamente leggibile disegnato da Matthew Carter per la Microsoft Corporation. Il nome è stato scelto da Virginia Howlett del gruppo tipografico Microsoft, che lo chiamò così rifacendosi al nome della figlia Ana.

Descrizione

Rilasciato nel 1996, il Verdana fu venduto insieme alle successive versioni del sistema operativo Microsoft Windows, come pure i software Microsoft Office e Internet Explorer sia in Windows sia in Mac OS. In aggiunta, è stato a lungo disponibile fra i download nel sito della Microsoft permettendogli di essere usato da qualsiasi sistema che supportasse i font TrueType. Come risultato, è ora installato nella maggior parte dei desktop computer. È ancora possibile scaricare il file ridistribuibile in un sito a parte (vedi la sezione Collegamenti esterni).

Bearing similarities to Humanist sans-serif typefaces such as Frutiger, Verdana was designed to be readable at small sizes on a computer screen. The lack of serifs, large x-height, wide proportions, loose letter-spacing, large counters, and emphasized distinctions between similarly-shaped characters are chosen to increase readability. As a result, it is often chosen by web designers attempting to cram large amounts of text into a small space. Indeed, Verdana is so much more readable than other common fonts of the same sizes that some have suggested that web authors not specify it for the body text of a web page, because then the author is likely to select a font size that makes the text unreadable when Verdana is unavailable [1]. According to one long-running survey [2], the availability of Verdana is 94% on Windows (making it the second most common font on that platform) and 92.6% on computers running Macintosh OS.

An example of the attention given to making similar letters distinguishable, the capital 'I' in Verdana has serifs, even though Verdana is a sans-serif font. This makes it easily distinguishable from 'l' and '1'.

The Tahoma typeface is similar to Verdana but with tighter letter-spacing; other similar faces include Frutiger and Bitstream Vera Sans.

The typeface was nominated for the Best Of British Design Award on BBC2's The Culture Show on January 26, 2006.

Combining characters bug

Verdana (v. 2.43) uses an incorrect position for combining diacritical marks, causing them to display on the following character instead of the preceding. This makes it unsuitable for Unicode-encoded text such as Cyrillic or Greek. If Verdana is installed, diacritics below are displayed over the letter e, whereas they should have appeared over the letter a. This bug does not usually reveal itself with Latin letters. This is because some font display engines substitute sequences of base character + combining character with a precomposed character glyph.

In Verdana: (assuming you have it installed)

а̀е а́е а̃е а̉е | ὰε άε α̃ε α̉ε | àe áe ãe ảe

On some platforms the Opera browser automatically fixes this Verdana bug. Examples below and above look identical, combining marks are on right places.

In your browser's current font:

а̀е а́е а̃е а̉е | ὰε άε α̃ε α̉ε | àe áe ãe ảe

(The first column is Cyrillic, the second column is Greek, and the third column is Latin)

See also

• Core fonts for the Web

References

• "Interview with Matthew Carter, designer of Verdana and Georgia"
• "Interview with Virginia Howlett, mother of Verdana" Retrieved September 9, 2005

External links

• Verdana font information (Microsoft typography)
• Channel Verdana (Microsoft typography)
• Downloadable version of Verdana (Core fonts for the Web)