Choosing text fonts

Choose a font that was designed for on-screen viewing. Examples include Arial, Arial Narrow, Trebuchet MS, and Verdana. You can download these and other fonts free of charge, from the Microsoft Typography web site.

TrueType and OpenType fonts are recommended because they can be resized easily, without losing text quality.

Raster fonts, such as Courier, Microsoft Sans Serif, Small Fonts, and so on are not recommended because they may not resize properly as the display resizes.

Choose only one or two fonts, and use them for all the graphic displays in an application.

Choose a font size that can be read easily. Test the font size, and adapt it to the screen resolution the operator will see at runtime.

To save screen space, use a condensed font such as Arial Narrow, which fits more characters per line, rather than reducing the font size.

Sans-serif typefaces are easier to read at small sizes and lower resolutions on the screen than serif typefaces. For example, for normal text use Arial rather than Times New Roman.

Use high-contrast color combinations, such as yellow on blue, rather than low-contrast combinations like black on green.

Use colors with recognizable meanings. For example, in some countries the colors red and green mean stop and start.

Keep color meanings consistent by assigning red only to Stop buttons, and green only to Start buttons.

Ensure that the fonts used in graphic displays are installed on all computers where the displays will run.

If a font is not installed, Windows substitutes one that is installed, possibly with unsatisfactory results.