Had a brief exchange with a colleague today about the Slashdot redesign winner, which is very nice. Comparing with the older design, the new one adds a good deal of white space around the margins by removing the black background and increases height between lines of text, which makes the left nav much easier on the eyes. The previous design always felt cramped to me.

In any case, the topic of fonts came up and we were discussing the merits of the new font selection. The new font on Slashdot is Tahoma, which has a pretty good installed base that's only slightly smaller than Arial. Like Verdana, Tahoma is a wide font specifically made for the screen and has a large x-height. Tahoma doesn't have the extra wide letter spacing of Verdana, which is supposed to make that font easier to read onscreen, but also causes it to push lines much wider than may be wanted. If you look at the fonts in the image below, you'll see how the spacing between letters differs in each typeface.

Which do you find most readable? In the end it will be a matter of style and preference, but an interesting usability study in Usability News 4.1 2002 on fonts and reading time, perceived legibility and attractiveness finds Verdana the winner. I agree that Verdana is very readable, but it's also kind of ugly. In the end, the choice is really a matter of style and attractiveness with any of the above. Tahoma seems a a solid enough compromise.