Thanks for the advice. One comment though: neither my personal site nor the DedaSys one has 'logos', just text, which Firebug says has the computed style: "Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif" at 48px. So I guess the issue is more one of "things don't render the same in all browsers - use an image if you want consistency". I don't care too much for my personal site, but the DedaSys one I'd like to look nice.
Please remove the ads from your website. Those ads bring you SMALL income now, but they affect your FUTURE income strongly. Removing the ads is delaying gratification - you give up the amount they give you now so that in the future you will earn more (from the larger number of people who will bookmark your site to be read later)
They were mostly there for the articles, where they 1) brought in a bit of beer money, and 2) didn't really seem to detract from anything (I can see the point about the home page ones). Anyway, I removed them.
My thought is usually this - if a person is interested enough in the type of money that ads bring that he clutters up his personal website, then this person must be pretty broke. And pretty broke people in the IT industry are usually not very smart people, because it's easy to make money in IT.
That's just my thought process, no personal offence intended.
...and there's your problem. Helvetica and Helvetica Neue both tend to look lousy on the web unless they're used in a graphic (where you get to control kerning and antialiasing) or at a relatively small size (10-14pt equivalent), and then only in Safari for the most part.
There are fonts that are just a little less elegant than the real Helveticas, fonts you wouldn't likely use in a print application, that render a whole lot better in browsers because they were designed for the screen and play with pixels better.
Arial isn't one of my favorites, but it is a proven web font, and whatever else it may be it is certainly a Helvetica rip-off. Use Geneva then a Helvetica as fall-backs.
Verdana makes great sans-serif body copy at small sizes, but it's a bit, um, portly for headings or body copy at large sizes.
Some folks seem to like Tahoma, but I find it makes some weird word-shapes that slow my reading. It's worth a try. Other popular and widely-distributed fonts like Trebuchet, Calibri and Candara work well, but not in a design as sparse as yours (they're too, well, organic to work in a clinical setting).
If you can find it in your heart to go serif (and you should whenever the text gets long), then georgia, garamond, palatino, "palatino linotype", serif; is what you want in almost every case. (Constantia is also pretty and readable, but less likely to be installed than Georgia, and damn Georgia sets well on the web.)
Comments
Thanks for the advice. One comment though: neither my personal site nor the DedaSys one has 'logos', just text, which Firebug says has the computed style: "Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif" at 48px. So I guess the issue is more one of "things don't render the same in all browsers - use an image if you want consistency". I don't care too much for my personal site, but the DedaSys one I'd like to look nice.
Please remove the ads from your website. Those ads bring you SMALL income now, but they affect your FUTURE income strongly. Removing the ads is delaying gratification - you give up the amount they give you now so that in the future you will earn more (from the larger number of people who will bookmark your site to be read later)
They were mostly there for the articles, where they 1) brought in a bit of beer money, and 2) didn't really seem to detract from anything (I can see the point about the home page ones). Anyway, I removed them.
My thought is usually this - if a person is interested enough in the type of money that ads bring that he clutters up his personal website, then this person must be pretty broke. And pretty broke people in the IT industry are usually not very smart people, because it's easy to make money in IT.
That's just my thought process, no personal offence intended.
...and there's your problem. Helvetica and Helvetica Neue both tend to look lousy on the web unless they're used in a graphic (where you get to control kerning and antialiasing) or at a relatively small size (10-14pt equivalent), and then only in Safari for the most part.
There are fonts that are just a little less elegant than the real Helveticas, fonts you wouldn't likely use in a print application, that render a whole lot better in browsers because they were designed for the screen and play with pixels better.
Arial isn't one of my favorites, but it is a proven web font, and whatever else it may be it is certainly a Helvetica rip-off. Use Geneva then a Helvetica as fall-backs.
Verdana makes great sans-serif body copy at small sizes, but it's a bit, um, portly for headings or body copy at large sizes.
Some folks seem to like Tahoma, but I find it makes some weird word-shapes that slow my reading. It's worth a try. Other popular and widely-distributed fonts like Trebuchet, Calibri and Candara work well, but not in a design as sparse as yours (they're too, well, organic to work in a clinical setting).
If you can find it in your heart to go serif (and you should whenever the text gets long), then georgia, garamond, palatino, "palatino linotype", serif; is what you want in almost every case. (Constantia is also pretty and readable, but less likely to be installed than Georgia, and damn Georgia sets well on the web.)