I'm actually quite disappointed that, while Marco added three new fonts (that's great), he completely removed the ability to use the standard system fonts, at least on my iPhone version!
The fact is, Times New Roman and Helvetica are two of the greatest typefaces of all time both for legibility, and for "receding into the background", so that you notice the content, not the font. Just because they're tremendously overused doesn't make them any less legible.
And while Elena, Lyon and Tisa are not terrible, all of them impose far more typographical personality on the text than I'd rather have. And for an app that people may spend an hour a day reading on, the choice of typeface is actually tremendously important. For me, Elena is just too boxy and spindly, with overlong serifs; Lyon's letterforms just need further work and refinement (the lowercase 'f' has too large of a hook, and feels like it's going to topple over to the right; the commas draw too much attention to themselves because of their size, etc.), and Tisa is just too casual, without enough variation between thick and thin strokes.
So please, Marco, bring back Times New Roman, Palatino, and Helvetica as additional options!
In both the iPhone and iPad versions, Helvetica and Palatino are still available, as are Verdana, Georgia, Hoefler Text, and Baskerville. They're just listed below the six new typefaces in the list. No TNR, but I'm personally ok with that--reminds me too much of MS Word.
There are certainly some other typefaces I would have preferred (Adobe Minion is one of my favorites), but I would imagine Marco was also constrained by the deals he could cut with the foundries. Especially given how quickly he incorporated the licensed typefaces, it seems like a remarkable upgrade to me, and I'm looking forward to trying it out more extensively.
Son of a gun! I just tried, and you're right. Thanks!
It's just that there is ZERO indication that area is scrollable. It shows three (on iPhone), has rounded corners, no scroll bar... definitely a failure in user-interface. Strange.
Yeah, I agree that discovering the scrolling nature of the iPhone's typeface list is not immediate for every user. Of course, that's a problem with most scrollable lists on iOS (and now Lion--cf. John Siracusa's comments on Hypercritical #27 about pawing at everything on the screen).
On the iPad, the list displays 4.5 lines, with the top of 'Meta' peeking up from the bottom, so that's a natural visual cue that the list continues. Perhaps there's room to fit in 3.5 (3.4?) lines on the iPhone app, but I would be concerned about making the list either too cramped or unbalanced next to the triad of buttons on the right. In any case, once one discovers that the list scrolls, it's hard to forget it, so perhaps it's fair to trade discoverability for a cleaner interface in the long run.
One additional minor flaw I noted on that list (iPhone and iPad alike): the 'Lyon' text looks like it's aligned too high. I suspect the descender on the 'y' is to blame, although I don't see the same problem with the item for Georgia, the only other font with a descender in its name. One-star review until it's fixed in 4.1.1! ;)
P.S. Glad to hear the appreciation for Minion--I was so happy the day I got my TeX installation configured to use it. I'll likely wait for the 4th generation to update my iPad 2, so Marco's got a year to hash out an agreement with Adobe to use it....
Comments
I'm actually quite disappointed that, while Marco added three new fonts (that's great), he completely removed the ability to use the standard system fonts, at least on my iPhone version!
The fact is, Times New Roman and Helvetica are two of the greatest typefaces of all time both for legibility, and for "receding into the background", so that you notice the content, not the font. Just because they're tremendously overused doesn't make them any less legible.
And while Elena, Lyon and Tisa are not terrible, all of them impose far more typographical personality on the text than I'd rather have. And for an app that people may spend an hour a day reading on, the choice of typeface is actually tremendously important. For me, Elena is just too boxy and spindly, with overlong serifs; Lyon's letterforms just need further work and refinement (the lowercase 'f' has too large of a hook, and feels like it's going to topple over to the right; the commas draw too much attention to themselves because of their size, etc.), and Tisa is just too casual, without enough variation between thick and thin strokes.
So please, Marco, bring back Times New Roman, Palatino, and Helvetica as additional options!
In both the iPhone and iPad versions, Helvetica and Palatino are still available, as are Verdana, Georgia, Hoefler Text, and Baskerville. They're just listed below the six new typefaces in the list. No TNR, but I'm personally ok with that--reminds me too much of MS Word.
There are certainly some other typefaces I would have preferred (Adobe Minion is one of my favorites), but I would imagine Marco was also constrained by the deals he could cut with the foundries. Especially given how quickly he incorporated the licensed typefaces, it seems like a remarkable upgrade to me, and I'm looking forward to trying it out more extensively.
Son of a gun! I just tried, and you're right. Thanks!
It's just that there is ZERO indication that area is scrollable. It shows three (on iPhone), has rounded corners, no scroll bar... definitely a failure in user-interface. Strange.
Minion would be my #1 pick too.
Yeah, I agree that discovering the scrolling nature of the iPhone's typeface list is not immediate for every user. Of course, that's a problem with most scrollable lists on iOS (and now Lion--cf. John Siracusa's comments on Hypercritical #27 about pawing at everything on the screen).
On the iPad, the list displays 4.5 lines, with the top of 'Meta' peeking up from the bottom, so that's a natural visual cue that the list continues. Perhaps there's room to fit in 3.5 (3.4?) lines on the iPhone app, but I would be concerned about making the list either too cramped or unbalanced next to the triad of buttons on the right. In any case, once one discovers that the list scrolls, it's hard to forget it, so perhaps it's fair to trade discoverability for a cleaner interface in the long run.
One additional minor flaw I noted on that list (iPhone and iPad alike): the 'Lyon' text looks like it's aligned too high. I suspect the descender on the 'y' is to blame, although I don't see the same problem with the item for Georgia, the only other font with a descender in its name. One-star review until it's fixed in 4.1.1! ;)
P.S. Glad to hear the appreciation for Minion--I was so happy the day I got my TeX installation configured to use it. I'll likely wait for the 4th generation to update my iPad 2, so Marco's got a year to hash out an agreement with Adobe to use it....