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The Scourge of Arial

I found this over at Guy's blog but even though he says it's not very general interest, it is certainly fascinating.

As a former Mac user, I know Helvetica but certainly have found myself relying almost exclusively on Arial with PC-based development. Maybe this is where Verdana comes in as a far better font to work with.

A few excerpts:
"Thus, Arial is now everywhere, a side effect of Windows' success, born out of the desire to avoid paying license fees."

"it was like asking for Jimmy Stewart and getting Rich Little."

"Arial owes its very existence to that success but is little more than a parasite—and it looks like it's the kind that eventually destroys the host."

Great reading - who knew that Microsoft was all for using "non-licensed" work way back when.

The Scourge of Arial

Comments

Game Geek said…
While Arial still ships standard and is used all over, Windows XP standard font it Tahoma. Vista will use a new standard font, Segoe.
May 10, 2006 at 10:50 AM
Andrew MacNeill said…
While MS may say the XP Standard font and Vista font is something else, the fact that the default font used by their development and Office environments are all Arial doesn't back that up.
May 10, 2006 at 11:31 AM
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