Why I am not longer specifying a font on this blog.

I recently obtained a computer running a Windows operating system, having used only various *nixes (several Linuxes, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS X) for the past four years. I navigated to my blog page out of idle curiosity and found it galling to the eyes. The fonts were a mess! I messed about with every setting I could think of, tried every browser on the machine, and then worked my way down through the list of visually appealing free fonts. Firefox and Opera looked better than IE and Chrome, but not very good. In the end I gave up.

I am more than slightly surprised by this development. I can’t even begin to guess how Windows renders the same font files so radically different than every other operating system I know. I don’t recall being bothered by more shoddy fonts on Windows than on other systems in the past. Is it just the eight fonts I tried that look rotten? And if so, why?

All you *nix users, wave goodbye to the typographical feel that was. And to the rest of you, I am sorry to have submitted you to such annoyance for so long.