Verdana font not behaving

[coopster]

font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

Has anybody ever had difficulty using this font in a higher resolution? I'm testing on a laptop running a 1920 x 1200 resolution and I'm finding that anywhere I use this font the size will not adjust properly at this resolution. I've tested in multiple browsers including Firefox, IE and Opera. Testing on other machines it works fine, the font adjusts with the style sheet. I tried reducing the resolution on this machine too, to see if that was the issue. And that changed nothing, so I'm now wondering if it isn't something else? Just looking for any insight or experience here ...

[swa66]

Not an answer, but some things to consider:
- what OS ?
- what monitor ? LCD, CRT ?
- what setting for font anti-aliasing ?

In my experience the anti-aliasing that windows uses doesn't look right, and IE6 has some serious font scaling issues (it jumps in steps instead of allowing any size) but most of those are for small fonts.

I'm seeing no such effect on my mac ...

Got some sample code that shows it ?

[coopster]

I guess I should have mentioned I tried different monitors for output as well as font adjustments.

OS: Win XP Pro SP2

Monitor: Tried both the LCD laptop display as well as an external monitor, neither impacted/changed the matter

Font anti-aliasing: Tried both Standard and ClearType

The crazy part is, if I switch to say, Times New Roman, all seems "back to normal"

[Xapti]

Okay you clearly stated that you tried other resolutions. Why then do you say it's a resolution problem in the title? Isn't it clear that the problem is with the computer itself?

In fact it's not clear as to what the problem is!
What do you mean by "anywhere I use this font the size will not adjust properly at this resolution"?
What actually happens, and what did you expect to happen? (something to do with size)

Maybe your problem has to do with font size? Is the size specified?

Or perhaps the problem is that Verdana isn't installed or something.
If the problem is with Verdana, use Verdana in your test scenario! not "Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif", because it's just harder to diagnose, IMO. If it can't display Verdana, it will display the default font.

[edited by: swa66 at 10:43 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2009]

[coopster]

Point taken on the poor choice of title for the thread. I'm not entirely sure where the issue lies, therefore my confusion is making this a very difficult discussion. But yes, it seems specific to this computer, or something about the way this computer is configured anyway. Thanks for bearing with me ...

Yes, font-size is specified and Verdana is installed and fine. The filemtime and everything else about the font file checks out with other computers here on the network, meaning it is not corrupted and is exactly the same as the other computers. So I discounted the actual font(s) themselves as being an issue. And I did try just Verdana. And just Helvetica. And just ... etc. etc. The font-family listed, each and every one, renders the font size so large that it is "pushing" too close to sibling text. BUT, only on this one machine. Other machines on the same network render the code in their browsers as one would expect. And this is being served from the same server, with the same appropriate headers. So I was trying to diagnose the issue. Indeed, as you mentioned, it seems to be only this one computer, but WHAT about this one computer? What in the world might cause the display to render so differently? I have no idea, so I posted here to see if anybody else had insight.

[Xapti]

That is very strange from the sound of it.
Are the letters getting condensed together so they are closer than normal (horizontally), or are lines of text too close or overlapping (vertically?)
Based off what you say it seems that the line-height is reduced, AND the font size is enlarged.
Assuming that is the behavior, the only thing I would possibly do at this point is to play around with font size units (em/pt/px) and line heights, and see if it changes the results... not that that will solve anything.
The only thing I could possibly imagine is that the computer has an abnormal DPI setting, the font is specified in pt/cm/in (/etc.), and there's some problem causing it to not scale right. I think that's a massive longshot though.

You don't get this problem in MS word/wordpad/notepad/OO write or anything else?

[phranque]

You don't get this problem in MS word/wordpad/notepad/OO write or anything else?

that's a good question!
several moderators were discussing coopster's issue over drinks at PubCon and nobody thought of suggesting a test of that font in a non-browser app.

[tangor]

I ran into a similar problem for a client some time back... rendering text that is, and it turned out to be in the advanced font settings for the system. Some one had changed system fonts to extra large...

Might check to see the computer is set to defaults.

[coopster]

Thanksgiving Day, and I'm thankful! Thanks fellas, DPI was the issue. The ATI driver program on the machine causing issues had the DPI set at 125%. Changed it back to normal and after a reboot all is well!

I would have never thought of this without some group troubleshooting. Once again, thanks. You made my day :)

[phranque]

graphics card-related - i called that one!
=8)