Monitors: Fonts not antialiased; Colors distorted! Solution?

It doesn't matter if you do all the error checking in the world, or if you have the most beautiful graphics, if your site or application design isn't usable, it's not going to do well. Get input and advice on usability and user interface issues here.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
nkulmati
Forum Newbie
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2007 4:32 pm

Monitors: Fonts not antialiased; Colors distorted! Solution?

Post by nkulmati »

Greetings, everyone.

A question on Web Design issues, not PHP. I assume many of the visitors are not only programmers, but also know quite a lot in general Web techology.

So, I encountered a tough dilemma recently, when developing a web site (of course :roll: ) on my laptop at home. In a couple of small places on the page, I use italic Trebuchet MS which, with little added letter-spacing, I find fantastic. So I test the page in a variety of resolutions that my laptop is capable of, and upload the files to the staging server.

Next day I am testing my site from work, where I have an old monitor (non-LCD) - duh!! -my page is presented to me not quite how I expected! Two issues:

1) My beautiful italic font is not anti-aliased enough, so it turns into a very ugly one! I have read about this issue with italic somewhere in the web, however found no tips on how to make it less of a problem. Have you guys come across a similar issue ? What did you do ? Did you leave the font as is, or remove the italic styling, or found an alternative? For my page, i feel that it is essential for that little text to be italic, however, the vast majority of targeted audience is not expected to be using modern monitors... :)

2) Some color gradient effects are distorted, and in particular: red-like gradients become yellow-like gradients!
I am not very experienced in graphics yet, but I did always realize that there exist some monitor testing techniques, however always neglected the need to research on that. So please, If you have expertise in what it's all about, I would really appreciate advice, tip or instruction.

Thanks and cheers to all of you here.
This is my first topic on this forum.
User avatar
jayshields
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1912
Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2005 12:11 pm
Location: Leeds/Manchester, England

Post by jayshields »

You only tested it on that one monitor? You should test it on more than one (old) monitor.

If you have a link, post it. I'm sure some people on here will let you know what it looks like on their screen.
User avatar
Mordred
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1579
Joined: Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:19 am
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

Post by Mordred »

jayshields wrote: I'm sure some people on here will let you know what it looks like on their screen.
Yeah, we can even send screenshots so you see for yourself! :twisted: :lol: 8)

(Sorry, couldn't resist)
Post Reply