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Op-ed

Why we're updating the default typography for Wikipedia

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By Jared Zimmerman
Jared Zimmerman is the Wikimedia Foundation's Director of User Experience. The User Experience team is a part of the Engineering & Product Development department at the Wikimedia Foundation. Team members are responsible for the design of new Wikimedia software products—how they look, feel, and behave when used. User experience designers have been integral in the launch of Wikimedia software like Wikipedia's mobile website and apps and the new notifications system, among others.
The old typography (above) and the new (below) on Ubuntu using Firefox

On 3 April, we will roll out some changes to the typography of Wikipedia's default Vector skin, to increase readability for users on all devices and platforms. After five months of testing and four major iterations and through close collaboration with the global Wikimedia community, who provided more than 100 threads of feedback, we've arrived at a solution which improves the primary reading and editing experience for all users.

What's changing

First, you'll notice a serif typeface is now used for headers, to more clearly differentiate them from body content. Main body content is displayed in a sans-serif typeface using a very dark grey on true white background, which decreases eye strain for people reading long blocks of text. You also may notice increased leading (the vertical space between lines in a paragraph), to improve readability and create a clean break for the scanning eye.

The old typography (above) and the new (below) on OS X using Chrome
Why we've updated our typography

Text is our core visual element of Wikimedia projects, whether it's an encyclopedia like Wikipedia, or a smaller project like Wikisource and Wikibooks. We want our users to sense accuracy, reliability, and clarity from our design. We also want to avoid overly flashy typography that detracts from the content. Prior to this typography update, we had more than 20 arbitrarily defined type sizes on desktop alone, which appeared inconsistent for our users. The type size was too small for many readers, and the line height could make reading long form content difficult. We often observed users with visual impairments using text zooming to increase text size, for instance. For headings, these should act as entry points in long pages of text and were styled accordingly to aid readability. We sought to achieve better balance and cohesiveness for users to efficiently scan the page or engage in long form reading.

These changes will be familiar if you have accessed the mobile version of any Wikimedia project, as most of the changes were first trialled there in 2012. Later, with the release of the new Beta Features system for desktop, these changes have been available to desktop users on an opt-in basis since November 2013. We have used Wikimedia mobile as a place to experiment with new features and designs which we continuously migrate to desktop version of our sites. We have extended that process to the desktop beta features to further refine these changes to be appropriate for larger screens. With this typography update, we are taking another step towards a consistent visual experience across desktop and mobile.

Learn more

We are extremely pleased about how well this collaborative process has gone and we look forward to you sharing your experience with the update. The following pieces of documentation may be useful if you have further questions or comments:

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I see this decision has been opposed also elsewhere.[1]. --Eleassar my talk 11:49, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that sans is more usual for headings and seriffed for text. This is Wikipedia, mind you, where things like that aren't usually taken into consideration in 'improvements'. I'm thankful that they seem to have left the easy to read and clear Monobook alone. (I detest Vector...) Peridon (talk) 12:26, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just an observation: I've written the sample text (on Massimo Vitelli) in Microsoft Office Word 2007 default layout, i.e. title in Cambria 26pt, subtitle in Cambria 12pt steel blue italics, body text in Calibri 11pt with 1.15 lines line spacing and 10 pt space after each paragraph. The similarity to the new typography is rather close (except for the subtitle).--Nø (talk) 12:42, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sans-serif type is the norm on screens, hence the body text. The use of seriffed type on headers seems to be focused on contrast (from the rest of the content) and evoking a feeling of what the content ought to be (authoritative, encyclopedic, neutral). The design makes sense, but I also understand your misgivings. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 18:16, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Eleassar and Peridon: Nihiltres is correct in his interpretation here. This and most of the other design choices are brought up in the FAQ about the update. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:11, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The solution that has been suggested so far will lead to worsening readability. According to Tschichold we use sans-serif fonts in headings and serif fonts in the main text, not the other way round. If it will be introduced as is, you should please include a switch to turn it off in preferences. Otherwise you will suffer the same setback as with the visual-editor disaster. I won't use this stylesheet.--Aschmidt (talk) 14:24, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hm.

  • While serif is traditionally measured as "more readable" I do wonder if the same is true of screen based text, and modern readers who see so much more sans. What is the latest research on this?
  • Excellent news about avoiding smaller fonts - we should have a standard font size "smallest comfortable reading size" and never go below that. This is an accessibility issue that affects probably 30%+ of our readership.
  • I would welcome a sans typeface that distinguishes between capital I and lowercase l.
  • Mixing sans and serif is something I thought went out after the first few years of computer font-craziness - the 1980s for most of us.
  • I wonder where the community consensus for this is: I have been out of touch recently so it may well be there, but I see no links to it. (Though I have looked at the discussion here - I see no consensus, just feedback, mainly the same issues that are brought up here.) From the other comments it does seem that this is something that would have benefited form community input - and this is about the fourth or fifth time that we have had this sort of issue.

All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 15:21, 29 March 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Rich, it appears that text typeset with sans-serif fonts is no longer harder to read than text in serif fonts because sans-serif typefaces have been developed further, and we are now more used to them. Also, sans-serifs are easier to read on-screen than serifs are. But the combination of serifs in headings and sans-serifs for the main body text is quite unusual and it is just a sign of bad taste. As to the capital I and the lowercase l, I can see quite a difference in Safari on my Mac—the capital I is a bit thicker than the l. I suggest to consult a typographer for advice, e.g., Erik Spiekermann.--Aschmidt (talk) 23:38, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Rich. A few thoughts on the points you bring up...
  • re: "While serif is traditionally measured as "more readable" I do wonder if the same is true of screen based text, and modern readers who see so much more sans. What is the latest research on this?" This is a really complex issue, but our current understanding is that sans-serif tends to be rated as more readable on screens. This is why we retained use of sans for body content.
  • On "a sans typeface that distinguishes between capital I and lowercase l." Someone else brought this up on the mediawiki.org talk page as well. The truth is, there is basically no sans-serif that does this really well and is available across major operating systems/browsers. Monospace and serif fonts tend to do this better, but neither are ideal for very large, dense blocks of text like the encyclopedia.
  • On mixing sans/serif: this is still pretty common, but ultimately is a choice the designers wanted to test and which we're implementing now because of the unique nature of Wikipedia pages. Our most popular articles, talk pages, policy, help, and more all tend to have in common the fact that they are long pages and have many sections. Providing contrast and visual breaks for major headers (h1, h2) aids readers in scanning pages for the information they're looking for. So while it's still fairly common to mix two different font families on a single UI, we're less about following trends here and more about solving a specific design problem.
  • On community consensus: it's easy to forget that the vast majority of people who will be impacted by this change are readers. These people do no typically get a say in editor-centric consensus processes, and ultimately we've never made these kinds of decisions based on consensus. The Vector launch followed a pretty similar pattern to this, meaning we beta tested as widely as possible -- in this case, with all mobile readers/editors as well as 10,000+ logged in users on desktop via Beta Features. After feedback from both editors and readers, we're confident these small tweaks to our typography are solving some of our core problems with text legibility, non-Latin script support, and more. Since individual editors and communities can still tweak this as needed with site CSS and personal CSS, we're not locked in to one experience for everyone regardless of personal preference or edge cases.
Thanks for the detailed comments/questions, as usual. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:24, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
StevenYou are welcome.
  • The mix of serif and san-serif might be something we get used to, like having the strap line on the logo in a serif typeface (perhaps we could match that to the H2 typeface at least) - but the blocky level 3 headings are really clunky lets look at all of them:

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

Level 5
Level 6
Well I would be hard pressed to come up with something better but the italics for level 6 - seem odd to me. We do have very good typographers and graphic design people in the community, who quite likely could.
  • On the community, I think there is a frustration when WMF, as is so often the case treats us as a slightly dumb younger sibling. The community, it is true, is in some ways dysfunctional - but so, I venture to suggest, is the Foundation. The difference is that the community culture allows us publicly introspect on our shortcomings (I posted on Meta yesterday that we identified the gender gap on or before 5 April 2002, while the Foundation was just a twinkle in someone's eye). We have in our number, certainly, all sorts of problematic personalties, who are not constrained by the mores of a hierarchical employment milieu (however well intentioned), but we also have artists, designers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, project managers, scientists, librarians, professors, soldiers, programmers, mediators, human resource people, middle managers and polymaths. This is the resource we use internally, and for many purposes it is at the disposal of the Foundation. Of course WP:NOTCOMPULSORY and it is good to have full time staff to drive these things through. This is all a slightly bigger issue, though, which we have discussed before - as I say I have been out of touch so I don't know, but it is always nice to think we are getting better at these things.
Steven& Aschmidt
  • Thanks for the update on sans readability, good to see my hypothesis was at least reasonable!
  • I believe Johnston typeface has the desired property, the l having a slight curve at the bottom. Whether something like this is available on all or most platforms I don't know, but I would expect it is. You can also use such a typeface and have the standard sans typeface as a fall-back, where it is not available. (You use this in your signature.) What about the much trumpeted web fonts, are they of any help?
This is Trebuchet MS with sans fallback: 123 HIJKL hijkl
All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 01:47, 31 March 2014 (UTC).[reply]
Trebuchet MS is also available on the Mac. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 01:50, 31 March 2014 (UTC).[reply]
[The Ubuntu font family has a similar distinction between I and l. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 01:52, 31 March 2014 (UTC).[reply]
Rich Farmbrough & Aschmidt Since he was brought up as an expert, and the question of mixing serif and san serif was as well, it might be of interest to see that the website of Erik Spiekermann's current consultancy EdenSpiekermann uses a mixture of (slab) serifs and san serif typefaces extensively. A quick search for "Best Practices of Combining Typefaces" will show many, many, many examples, thoughts, and, well… best practices. Its far from a craze, a fad, or something that was done in the 80s, rather it is a core skill taught to designers very early in their education, that they will hopefully be able to put into practice in the right opportunities. Thank you for your continued feedback, it is much appreciated, and always welcome. Jared Zimmerman (talk) 08:04, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Aschmidt and Rich Farmbrough: The question of "sans-serif vs serif" for body copy, on a screen, has long been debated. The main argument, is that print is at ~1,000ppi (pixels per inch), whereas monitors have generally been 60-72-110ppi; and that whilst serif is generally preffered for print, sans-serif is more legible under this restraint. Hence, a large group of designers argue that at lower pixel densities (all CRT and most LCD monitors, but possibly not the latest tablet/smartphone displays), and also at lower font-sizes, sans-serif typefaces are easier to read. This has become a frequently challenged "rule" of web typography, so there are many sources discussing it, such as this or that representative articles, or Jakob Nielsen talking about HD screens, to this infographic. The main objection to all that, afaik, is found in Alex Poole's overview of the research papers, which comes to the conclusion that there really isn't a definitive answer. Sadly, he doesn't mention Tschichold, as I'd like to have learned what he recommended - please let me know, if you have the reference handy. (I have a slight knowledge of his great works, via the articles on Book design and Canons of page construction which I helped on years ago). :)
Regarding the upcoming change in MediaWiki's defaults, we've always (at least for MonoBook and Vector) specified "sans-serif" for the body, so that aspect of the "refresh" isn't much of a change. However, if you'd like to see what a project looks like with serif as a body font and sans-serif as the header, just add this code to your own vector.css file: h1, h2, #firstHeading {font-family:sans-serif !important;} body {font-family:serif !important;} - This would be a much more drastic change, as you can see!
I hope that helps; let me know if it doesn't. –Quiddity (talk) 20:35, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It certainly does. I'm sure Jared is probably right about mixing serif and sans being a designer's "core skill" these days - I'll ask my daughter presently if they are teaching this at her university. Just for fun I performed a census on my desktop (well until I got fed up finding unpaid bills) the results are at User:Rich Farmbrough/Desktop Survey. Of 54 items, excluding logos 46 were all sans or all serif, four books had a sans jacket design and serif inside, and four items were mixed. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 20:57, 31 March 2014 (UTC).[reply]
How do the people that make these changes know that there is a problem to address if it mainly affects those who don't edit? I would think that pure readers wouldn't go to the trouble of contacting Wikipedia or the Foundation if they liked the set-up (be honest - have you ever sent a compliment to a website on their design?). I would expect the few comments that do get made where they can be heard or seen could be outweighed considerably by those who either don't care, or who just mutter to themselves quietly, or who actually like the existing setup. How one would prove any of this, I don't know. I do know that I've only once complimented a site on their content and design (it belonged to a friend, and I was offering free proof-reading to her as the number of typos rather spoilt the otherwise excellent design), and have told others that their design was really crap and didn't even work properly... Peridon (talk) 14:27, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
PS I think there's something unfinished about the post above mine... Peridon (talk) 14:27, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Moving the two recent post above by Peridon to bottom of section to restore chronology. Thus, "the post above mine" refers to the post with the sample headings at various levels.--Nø (talk) 14:42, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Let people know how to try it out

It's not clear from the article above, or even from any of the linked references, how to try this out. The information is obfuscated in the sentence, "Later, with the release of the new Beta Features system for desktop, these changes have been available to desktop users ...". Could you please edit the above to put in the lead, "To try this feature out, go to Preferences → Beta features, and enable "Typography refresh". (I have to say, for a UX person to miss this, is a little bit ironic.) Klortho (talk) 17:16, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An easier way would be to simply point out that MediaWiki (where the FAQ is) is already using the new typography. — Edokter (talk) — 00:00, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You have also to switch to Vector. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 00:48, 31 March 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Give it a chance

It's unfortunate that the Wikipedia community seems so negative toward any design changes being made. Perhaps that's true of all websites, and Wikipedians are just able to be much more vocal due to the nature of the platform. I think this is a huge improvement, albeit I didn't when I first turned it on. After a few days I got used to it, and the changes are much more obvious when you look at the comparison images. Hopefully we see better reception for Flow and VisualEditor's respective releases, but perhaps that's too optimistic. Thanks to the Design team for the work they've put in, hopefully we can move past early 2000's web design without too much friction from users. --Nicereddy (talk) 01:22, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nicereddy, thank you for your feedback and thoughts. Jared Zimmerman (talk) 08:08, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is exactly how I feel about it as well. I've quite enjoyed the change for one. We do as a community though seem dedicated to not changing anything ever. Zell Faze (talk) 14:33, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Nicereddy: When I read your comment, my first thought is that you must be fairly new. I checked your user page and wasn't surprised to see you've only been editing for a bit over a year. The reason people seem so negative towards changes is that there's been a long history of changes being forced upon users that are poorly conceived, poorly implemented, and ultimately disruptive. With a mature, valuable project like Wikipedia, the attitude should be very conservative towards change. It's a good thing. Unfortunately, the WMF has yet to figure out what should be done by fiat and what should be decided by community. With the Typography "update", I think it's a legitimate question whether it is needed in the first place. Users weren't really complaining about the current typography, so is this genuinely an improvement or is it lateral change? At its core, it may actually just be change for the sake of change despite the clothes it's been dressed in. The point is that the WMF has not been very successful in many of its interface-related projects and has been heavy-handed in making changes. The faith of long-term editors has been shaken by it and there's justifiable suspicion. Jason Quinn (talk) 02:16, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This change was not done "by fiat". It's not really feasible to change the typography across all Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects one-by-one, per community. But that doesn't mean that community members were not intimately involved in the creation of this update. We tested this as a beta feature for over five months. During that time, there were more than 100 threads of comments and suggestions we've responded to on the Talk page, as well as hundreds of emails on the public mailing lists for design and technical issues. We released three entirely different iterations on the design, based on feedback we got. What we've settled on is a balance between forward-thinking ideas from the designers and feedback from the community. On top of that, we spent countless hours testing this across languages and browsers, to make sure it has the widest possible utility for readers and editors. To suggest that this change simply sprung out of the minds of Foundation designers without community feedback is simply not true. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 08:02, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The valid use of the word here depends on whether the community will have a choice if they want this change, not whether they were able to give feedback. The Typography change is going to be rolled out without an editor/reader-based decision. So, the use of the word is apropos. As for the feedback process, the new "Beta" features section is a very good idea and it certainly improves new software. It's a major step in the right direction. In my opinion, however, this is how the timeline of major new features desired by developers or the WMF should generally be: A) developers or WMF notice a problem or a better way of doings things, B) developers or WMF make case for change to community, C) community is asked if the project should be implemented (they will likely say yes... people love the lore of new things), D) project is implemented and available for feedback in "beta", E) community is asked whether project should be deployed when developers feel implementation is mature, F) if consensus is for deployment, it is deployed while if consensus is against it, the community is asked if development should continue or be halted. As it is, steps B and E and F are often missing in the process. That said, cases could arise where doing thing by decree are justified. But I double down on my point that the WMF has done this too much and it helps explain part of the resistance editors give towards change. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:56, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I concur. The problem I have with this is that they just admitted to overriding editor consensus for what they think the readers want. Editor consensus is a core concept of Wikipedia. Overriding it means you don't have faith in the project. That is what is so upsetting about these changes from on high.
There are obvious compromises that could have been found if consensus had been tried. They mention how Vector was implemented--notice how that was a separate skin that you could disable? We didn't have to edit code to fix it. We just changed an option. Users could have been given an option and made it the default for new users. Then we could warn people right as the change was happening and immediately give them an easy way to opt out. Instead of asking people what they want, the WMF instead have a page that telling us what we need (that I only saw because I went to my watchlist page, something I rarely do since I use a feed). And then a comments section where we are constantly thanked for our input but then told we are wrong. (It's honestly quite condescending.)
Our consensus process exists for a reason. As a group, we can think of things that individuals won't. We can come up with solutions that won't alienate a bunch of people. The whole concept of Wikipedia is that we are better together than alone. Why can't the WMF respect what was built instead of trying to control it? Why should we give them a chance when they won't give us a chance? — trlkly 18:15, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
trlkly: WMF's job is to improve the software for everyone, readers and editors alike. Making changes like we have --gradually, over five months, with hundreds of discussions and input from community members who opted to try the feature-- is example of how much we do respect community input. As always individual editors are editors are able to opt-out of this change, or to use a different skin. This is a new default, but that doesn't mean you or any editors are personally forced to use it. Given the fact that we took nearly half a year to consult with the community on the substance of the changes, I think it's unfair to say we don't respect the viewpoint of the editing community. (Not to mention the fact that, like myself, many of the staff actually come from the community.) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:31, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Horrible, horrible, horrible. It just shows how traditional compositing skills have been lost. Why not just use Comic Sans for all the titles? Sheesh. I'm an active WP user and occasional editor, and the first I knew about this pointless and ugly redesign was when it appeared on my screen tonight. Shame on you. --Ef80 (talk) 23:57, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The claim that this change was implemented after establishing community consensus makes the logical fallacy of ignoring selection bias, or more specifically, self-selection bias (people who enter the beta are a small minority of the larger community who are not necessarily representative of it). —Lowellian (reply) 20:14, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Talk pages

I love the typography changes on article pages... but they're making talk pages almost unreadable for me. Can someone point me to a way to selectively disable this outside of NS0, or am I going to have to disable the whole thing? Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:35, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not willing to change

I'm not sure what you call it, but when I'm signed in everything looks the way it did when I joined Wikipedia in 2007. So I assume I get to keep the typefaces that I have.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:19, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, the changes will go live on April 3rd. — Edokter (talk) — 20:41, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone seems to dislike the new-and-upcoming Wikipedia design. But what was the reaction to the current Wikipedia design when it rolled out in 2010? Mr*|(60nna) 00:12, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For the record: I do not dislike it. But then, I'm not everyone.--Nø (talk) 14:43, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
God, it just switched for me and I find it absolutely hideous. I immediately used the opt-out to change it back. —Cliftonian (talk) 19:22, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just a heads-up that the opt-out provided doesn't put the image captions back how they were before. —Cliftonian (talk) 19:32, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Which opt-out would that be? — Edokter (talk) — 19:43, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This one —Cliftonian (talk) 20:07, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I was not signed in; it looked different. I signed in and it looked as it always has.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:53, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's caching. It will change at some point. — Edokter (talk) — 19:58, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt it. My typefaces have never changed, at least not significantly. This is not a cache.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:39, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How to tell if you've got font aliasing turned on...

It's worth noting that the new look is horrendous if you've not got font aliasing turned on (ClearType or similar) whereas the previous look was fine without. Like really, really horrible. I'm not sure what %age of people will find a problem with that, but I suspect it's non-zero and deserves a mention in the FAQ (and possibly more prominently than that for users of OS like XP that don't have aliasing on by default). As a clue - if all the "f"'s look like they're in bold, then you need to switch on font aliasing. Le Deluge (talk) 20:16, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Difficult to read

This new font is too narrow and high, as if I was trying to read barcode... - Ermöglicht (talk) 20:19, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ermöglicht: What OS/Browser are you using? (this is my before and after, and it took me a couple of days to get used to it.)
I see in the thread below, someone comments that they now see a wider font! Maybe this is just what happens when we obtain a measure of consistency, after 14 years of inconsistent viewing conditions. ;) –Quiddity (talk) 23:08, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I'm on Firfox most current regular version and Windows 7 and I have the same problem as the above poster: way too narrow. Millahnna (talk) 00:37, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

These changes are absolutely awful. I created an account just to say this. I seriously don't recall ever installing Linux Libertine or Liberation Sans on my Windows 8 machine but there they are, seemingly out of nowhere. Liberation Sans looks like total garbage. The new leading is very excessive. What were you people thinking? VolvoV70guy (talk) 20:43, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Completely agree with the sentiments above. This font is a lot harder to read now. I'm not going to get reading glasses just so I can still read wikipedia articles. J Bar (talk) 01:28, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's worth pointing out the the sample pictures provided are of a corner of a page on a very short article. I've actually found that while viewing small amounts of text, the new typography is superior. But when I'm looking at a full screen of it (1680x1050) it literally gives me a headache and I'm not exaggerating. I think this is another example of the creep of bad design due to phones, similar to how all major websites these days seem to be moving towards excessive (size 18) body text.

Here are some pictures: Finnish wiki, German wiki and English wiki. I'm using Windows 7 and Firefox 28.0. - Ermöglicht (talk) 14:46, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I was just about to turn off all of my style changes I'm using to override the redesign so I could post those screencaps that wee requested of me elsewhere on the page but your images basically match mine. Super narrow to the point where it's only readable when blown up to ridiculous proportions. It looks like, in your images, you have font smoothing turned on because that's what it looked like for me that way. Without font smoothing it was even worse. Characters wee slightly pixelated in addition to the narrow dysfunction. Millahnna (talk) 22:33, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bad Design

Wow, this is just awful. The text is now way to big for me to read comfortable and the font makes everything look messy. Please create an option in our preferences so we can set the typography back to the original ASAP!--Dom497 (talk) 21:03, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • I for one find the new font really hard to read. The letters are wider, 'o' and such are more of a perfect circle than an oval, and there's more space between the letters as well. Between that and the lighter color, the word I want to use is 'ghostlike'. There's just not enough distinction for me to focus.24.237.17.159 (talk) 22:52, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not usually that resistant to change, but this really is hideous, isn't it. Serif font for article header over sans text, oh deary dear. I've used the fix suggested by Cliftonian above and it seems to have gone back to the sober sans article header. Ericoides (talk) 04:36, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Normally I'm not really into the politics on Wikipedia and all the back-end stuff and try to keep out of everything but I really have to speak up on this. This new font change is god-awful and severely reduces the readability of the site. I can barely even read the Wiki now. This never should have happened. TiffyWiki (talk) 05:05, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, it's definitely worse to read on my laptop. Letters melt into weird ligatures, all f-s seem to be in bold, etc. Looks like it was designed by people with big screens. --Oop (talk) 06:30, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Agree with Dom497 et al; this typography change makes Wikipedia look like a ransom note. Please revert ASAP. It's not enough that there are ways to opt-out for the tiny minority of users willing and able to fiddle with per-user CSS scripting - keep in mind that the majority of users don't even have accounts and are not editors. —WinTakeAll💬 14:10, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Consideration for folks with font smoothing disabled

It's clear you guys didn't test without font smoothing or you decided that it wasn't worth the consideration. Think about how much of the population prefers font smoothing disabled to improve readability. There are some font smoothing that works well (Mac OSX) while font smoothing elsewhere does not and reading text with it on is a readability pain.

Incomplete testing + no mention of supporting readability cases where font smoothing is on or off = terrible decision making. Nommus (talk) 23:54, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, even with font smoothing on (which I hate because, as you said, cleartype makes things hurts readability most of the time) it's not much better. The new font is super tiny and very narrow. Is it a condensed font? It instantly gave me a headache and the fix posted above for keeping the original design is not working (yes I reloaded while bypassing cache). I had to blow up the page 6 or seven times to make the words wide enough that I could actually make out the letters. This looks horrid. Millahnna (talk) 00:29, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We actually increased the font size by at least one level (13 to 14). It should not appear smaller for you, especially since we also selected fonts that have a tall x-height. What browser/operating system do you use? Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:41, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Firefox most current regular (non-beta) build, Windoze 7. I did give it a go in safe mode in case one of my extensions was causing an issue and no joy... super narrow. Looks ok on Chrome (once I turned on font smoothing which is killing my eyes elsewhere) but not great. It looks like a completely different font though (husband uses chrome so that we don't override each other's cookies on same login, he may have settings tweaked). Double checked my FF settings and I did not force my own fonts: I let the site do their thing. Had to put in the custom css opt out someone posted above to even keep reading this conversation. Letting FF force my font choices works too, but I'm not fond of doing that. Millahnna (talk) 00:48, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Millahnna: Can you post a screenshot so we can visualize what you are talking about? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:12, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Steve there is no guarantee that readers are seeing the font selected. That's why you should always always have several suitable fallbacks. What is the font btw? All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 02:12, 4 April 2014 (UTC).[reply]
To answer myself by quoting the FAQ
New font specifications
We have set the following font families: heading styles have been set to "Linux Libertine, Georgia, Times, serif". Body copy (the main text of pages) has been set to "Arimo, Liberation Sans, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif".
Would be nice to see what people are getting. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 02:20, 4 April 2014 (UTC).[reply]
  • In favor! I just walked in on this, happening to look at this page just now. I can see a difference, and I like it. I'm 65 (41 hex :-)) and I use a laptop, and lately I've been tweaking my resolution and zoom to ease my reading. This new typography lets me read comfortably with more text visible than I could before. --Thnidu (talk) 05:39, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I like the changes. It will take some getting used to, but as a designer, I do like the choices. Linux Libertine is a really high quality free and open font, it looks great in the big Headlines. I wouldn't want to have it as small text on a screen, though -- too delicate.
I noticed I did get Liberation Sans for the body. I thought I had Arimo installed, too. But maybe I decided they are so similar, I only need one... Now I installed Arimo again, will see if I notice the difference. Anyhow -- both have more character than Arial. I never liked the spiked t of Arial ;)
There are of course visible differences between browsers. I have tried Opera 12, Opera 22, Firefox 28, IE 11, all on Win7 with font smoothing on. To me, the old Opera rendering looks best with the copy text. The leading is good and really makes a difference in readability with the long lines you get when you have a fullscreen browser window. I still will scale everything a bit larger, since my screen is quite a bit away from my eyes. --87.157.78.253 (talk) 20:57, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That said, I tested without "Cleartype" now, and noticed that Arimo is still OK but Liberation Sans fails badly, like in the screenshot above. So you should consider taking Liberation Sans out of the font stack until they can clean up their hinting. If you don't add another font to replace it in the stack, then most people on Windows will probably see Arial, like before. --87.157.78.253 (talk) 21:05, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A quick search turned up this bit from 2012: Liberation fonts: hinting needed. So it was already an issue then. Maybe the need for an updated hinting will be more urgently felt now. There are automated hinting tools out there, ttfautohint is GPL/FTL. Hope it can be done! --87.157.78.253 (talk) 21:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Argh, me again... It looks as if I may have had an older version of Liberation Sans installed. The newest 2.00.1 version seems to have better hinting when Cleartype is off. It's still not as clean as MS' own fonts. But I don't know any fonts apart from MS Core that look good when Cleartype is off.--87.157.78.253 (talk) 21:43, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Even then, asking users to en masse download a new version of Liberation Sans is probably not realistic. Based on these issues for users with ClearType off and some related issues on Windows 7, I am going to suggest that we remove Liberation Sans from the specification. How would people feel about that? Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
YES PLEASE! 37.192.250.101 (talk) 03:34, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You would need a replacement for Linux systems. Helvetica should map to Nimbus Sans L, but it wouldn't hurt to include it explicitely (it has 100% penetration on Linux), so it would become: "Nimbus Sans L", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif;. Also, I brought up anohter idea on MediaWiki that may deserve some thought. — Edokter (talk) — 00:20, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To be sure that Windows does not use any stale fonts, like HP's version of Helvetica, only Helvetica Neue should be used. That will make bot Mac and Winodws happy. To that end, I recommend the above font stack. — Edokter (talk) — 12:43, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That would be a smart thing. I agree with this font stack. --87.157.69.73 (talk) 20:33, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Also, Arimo does not belong on Windows systems!! That font has absolutely no any hinting, vertical strokes of different width and asymmetric letter C! That is an insult to the users! 37.192.250.101 (talk) 13:01, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Don't be hatin' so much... The newest Arimo version definitly has hinting, it looks good on my Win7 with anti-aliasing. Without, it's still not as sharp as system fonts, but not horrible any more. But since we really cannot tell people to go upgrade their fonts, we need to take the safest route. A stack like above would be safe, I think. --87.157.69.73 (talk) 20:33, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Really in the dark ages, but happy!

How to determine which Font are being used in your Browser?

Where to download Fonts?

This hasn't been thought out well...

  • Suggestion: Revert the font change, for non-header text. The change in font width for regular text has introduced typesetting orphans in image captions where editors have done work to avoid them (for example, the World War I article). Therefore, I propose that this specific part of the style change should be reverted, so we don't have to divert attention to non-content issues. - Anonimski (talk) 17:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you can be really sure about how a certain text looks on other computers. There will always be other fonts, other font-sizes etc, so I don't think it's possible to control things like orphans. And if you insert linebreaks just for aesthetic reasons, that may add usability problems (e.g. for people using text-to-speech readers). --87.157.78.253 (talk) 20:25, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The IP is correct. There are a lot of variables that determine what you see, even including your computer's screen width. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:59, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The screen width doesn't affect what's inside the image captions. They should appear the same for everyone, provided that the page is viewed at 100% zoom level and the basic fonts are installed properly. - Anonimski (talk) 15:01, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Put Arial over Liberation c..p

Please put the normal font Arial over that s..t called Liberation. With Liberation there is no letter which looks sharp, the curved lines are asymmetric, strokes have DIFFERENT width, connection of strokes and curves look dirty, etc. It is completely unusable!! 37.192.250.101 (talk) 03:31, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I use Liberation daily and this is how it looks like to me — none of the issues you mention. Maybe this is just your font renderer. Although this is yet another reason why fonts should be up to the user's browser to choose. — Keφr 14:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You use it "daily" on which O/S and Browser, include the version of each. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 07:33, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bold italics?

I thought something was amiss the moment this was rolled out: anything now coming up in italics now looks bold as well, which is just horrible, and very messy when reading or editing biographies of writers or actors. - SchroCat (talk) 19:15, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why not a new skin?

  • Why has the decision been to change the Vector skin rather than to introduce a new one? This would allow to keep the old appearance for logged-in users rather than changing to another, different-looking skin. Indeed, I switched to Monobook since the serif fonts appear misplaced to me. At first, I thought that might be a rendering error or something like that. Actually, I never really liked serif fonts since they have a sort of conservative outdated look, and are only common in newspapers or literature. I don't see the point of increasing the contrast between text body and headlines since the headlines are already using enlarged fonts. The new fonts simply look wrong somehow (sorry).--SiriusB (talk) 15:20, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • SiriusB: A skin is an entire layout system. We did not intend to change the entire layout of the default site view, only the way text is rendered. You can actually keep the old typography by either changing your personal CSS, or using the gadget in preferences to use the old Vector typography. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 08:38, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • I looked up for this gadget but didn't find anything. My prefs page only offers the four skin types and the optional CSS (the offered retro-fitting CSS is buggy, there are various error messages). Edit: even under "Gadgets" there is nothing that fits. Could you please describe me, where exactly this old Vector typography switch can be found? Found. It was probably a cache problem in the browser that prevented it from appearing. But it doesn't work anyway, so I switched to Monobook.--SiriusB (talk) 15:58, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of serif type: a relic of the past

  • The original purpose of serifs was to widen strokes at the ends to make them more wear-resistant. If only a serif breaks off, the letter is still usable, so it adds to durability twice.
  • Typewriters introduced extreme serifs for multiple purposes:
    • to fill an em (the space the letter M occupies) even with narrow letters like i, I, l – otherwise "Illinois" would look like "I l l inois" or even worse, "I l l i no i s".
    • Early typewrites were horribly inaccurate, so their typefaces were exposed to much more wear than in regular printing.
    • There was only one type per letter, or two in the case (typography) of capital and small letters. In printing, all wear was spread out across the type pool, but a typewriter produces each "a" with the very same type.

The Vector skin should really NOT have been changed. Why not keep the old Vector, and use the new "Vector 2014" as the new default?

- ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 08:06, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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