
Typography for User Interfaces - samsolomon
https://viljamis.com/2016/typography-for-user-interfaces/
======
Animats
From the article: _" we’ve had graphical user interfaces for mere four
centuries."_

What's the graphical user interface from around 1600? Or did he mean "four
decades"?

The oldest GUI of which I am aware is General Railway Signal's NX system,
first installed in 1937.[1] These used engraved letters in white on black,
with a sans-serif font with fixed line width. There were earlier control
boards, but this was the first system which had active systems to assist the
operator in routing trains. In previous systems, operators set signals and
threw switches. With NX, operators selected a path for an entering train, and
lights lit up at all the places it could exit. Pressing an exit light set all
the necessary switches and signals. All this was interlocked against conflicts
for safety.

[1]
[http://www.rrsignalpix.com/grsnx.html](http://www.rrsignalpix.com/grsnx.html)

~~~
cjcenizal
I'm honestly not sure what the author's referring to, but if you consider
things like a table of contents, page numbers, indices, footnotes, and
reference sections to be part of a book's GUI, then we've had GUIs almost as
long as we've had books. Though I admit it's a bit of a stretch. :)

~~~
LoSboccacc
they had an helpdesk for that [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-
SjgQvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ)

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oofabz
It's funny how the article praises large x-height and low-contrast strokes,
yet it is written in Garamond, a font with small x-height and high-contrast
strokes.

Personally I like small x-height and high-contrast strokes, so I find the
article very readable. But I think fonts with these features require higher-
DPI displays. Consider Computer Modern, which is beautiful on paper but
unreadable at low resolution.

I wonder if the studies mentioned in the article took this into account. Were
they testing readability on low-res screens, paper, or what? Would you get
different results if you changed the medium?

~~~
jacobolus
The article is talking typefaces for UIs, not for body copy.

A telephone book, a phone screen menu, a novel, and a traffic sign all have
dramatically different constraints on legibility.

~~~
rickycook
true, but the difference between a 1080p and retina displays are quite stark.
as is the difference between LCD and eInk. that might change things?

~~~
erelde
Retina is, at best, a standard of pixel density, in general it's just
marketing.

~~~
yoz-y
Standard on phones yes, but the PC market has not yet caught up. A 1920x1080px
monitor is still the baseline.

~~~
franciscop
Because of battery life

~~~
lorenzhs
GP was referring to Desktop screens, not laptops, I believe. Those are AC
powered.

~~~
yoz-y
Indeed. The thing I find surprising about laptops that one has basically
choice between a HiDPI screen, or a 1366x768 "Everything is blurry" screens.

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kazinator
I noticed this page's text is rendered with nice fi and ffi ligatures. Yet,
they are individual characters. How do you coax that out of a browser? I see
the CSS references a bunch of .woff files.

~~~
acdanger
There are CSS rules that control a typeface‘s ligatures for OTF fonts.
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-
varian...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-variant-
ligatures)

~~~
samsolomon
Also note that these additional ligatures are not always included in web
fonts.

------
PostThisTooFast
Also: Don't capitalize every word of control labels. That's amateur-hour.
They're not titles or proper nouns, and capitalizing them leaves you no option
when you DO refer to a title or proper noun.

