I recently read Joel Spolsky's article Designing for People Who Have Better Things To Do With Their Lives, Part Two, and was intrigued by this:
... You may have noticed that almost every edit box on the Macintosh uses a fat, wide, bold font called Chicago which looks kind of ugly and distresses graphic designers to no end. Graphic designers (unlike UI designers) have been taught that thin, variable spaced fonts are more gracious, look better, and are easier to read ...
... When you need to edit text, monospace has a major advantage over variable spaced fonts: it's easier to see and select narrow letters like "l" and "i"...
While monospaced fonts are easier to select, that don't look elegant on UI. First impression is a virtue. So I tried to see if we could bring the best of both worlds: A textbox that displays in Sans Serif, but changes to Monospaced when selected.
I would like to know what you think of this:
- It's annoying. Keep to a fixed font.
- It looks good in both UI and UX.
- Other?