Bold font in posts difficult to discern

Laird, is it possible to adjust the bold type? While it does look bold as I type it, when it gets posted I can hardly see the difference between bold and normal text.

[Laird]

Laird, is it possible to adjust the bold type? While it does look bold as I type it, when it gets posted I can hardly see the difference between bold and normal text.

That might be more a matter of the fonts installed/used by your browser than PQ forum configuration. I say that because the bold is quite well set off for me on my browser. Here's a screenshot of how your text above appears to me.

That might be more a matter of the fonts installed/used by your browser than pf forum configuration. I say that because the bold is quite well set off for me on my browser. Here's a screenshot of how your text above appears to me.

Ahh now that's interesting. I use Edge on Windows 10 but I just tried with Firefox with the same result ... can hardly notice the bold type. I don't have any special fonts configured - just the default browser settings. I'd be interested to see if I am the only one.

Just to check with another web site, I opened a tab on the BBC News site and can immediately see that the bold type is significantly bold compared to the regular text. Again I make the point that bold looks Bold as I type in this text but after posting the effect is diminished.

[Laird]

Well, all I know is that the effective default font for PQ posts is (13px) Trebuchet MS, and simply the generic "sans-serif" if that font is not found. I'm not sure how to look up whether that font is installed on your machine; maybe with some googling you can check and make sure it is, and/or that the generic "sans-serif" font is adequate in terms of bolding.

Ahh now that's interesting. I use Edge on Windows 10 but I just tried with Firefox with the same result ... can hardly notice the bold type. I don't have any special fonts configured - just the default browser settings. I'd be interested to see if I am the only one.

Just to check with another web site, I opened a tab on the BBC News site and can immediately see that the bold type is significantly bold compared to the regular text. Again I make the point that bold looks Bold as I type in this text but after posting the effect is diminished.

You're right, text during editing does look different to the same text after posting.

Apparently - from my digging around using Firefox on Windows, when editing a post the font list is: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif, whereas after posting, as Laird said it is Trebuchet MS + defaults. All these fonts as far as I'm aware are available by default with recent versions of Windows.

I don't know whether this will work:

Just some bold text in Tahoma font

Just some bold text in Trebuchet MS font

Mock-up of appearance in a word-processor:
   

Let's try italics:

Just some italicised text in Tahoma font

Just some italicised text in Trebuchet MS font

Well, all I know is that the effective default font for PQ posts is (13px) Trebuchet MS, and simply the generic "sans-serif" if that font is not found. I'm not sure how to look up whether that font is installed on your machine; maybe with some googling you can check and make sure it is, and/or that the generic "sans-serif" font is adequate in terms of bolding.

Well, I have checked and I certainly do have Trebuchet MS installed on my Windows PC.

Looking at the examples posted by @Typoz (above) I still can hardly make out the bold with the Trebuchet example.

Here's a screen shot of the two fonts typed into Wordpad on Windows. I am not given the choice of 13 point (it goes from 12 to 14).

[Laird]

Maybe what we can do, then, is switch the default font for rendered posts to Tahoma, and see whether that causes issues for other members - if not, we could keep it that way. Typoz might like to do the honours, as he did in slightly restyling our default theme. If not, then I'm happy to give it a go.

Maybe what we can do, then, is switch the default font for rendered posts to Tahoma, and see whether that causes issues for other members - if not, we could keep it that way. Typoz might like to do the honours, as he did in slightly restyling our default theme. If not, then I'm happy to give it a go.

Well, I might. It seems a lifetime ago, I was using a different machine where I had my own server running a dummy version of the forum software. That machine is mostly retired now. I guess a simple change like this could be done direct on the live system, as long as I can figure out where and what files need changing. Maybe. But I won't rush at it.

I'm not sure changing the default font for everyone (those who use the default theme anyway) is the right solution. Certainly there is a strong argument in favour of synchronising the editing and rendered post fonts.

My doubts arise around the zoom settings. I commonly adjust the zoom level of my browser for just about every website I visit. But these two fonts, Tahoma and Trebuchet MS seem behave differently as the zoom level is increased or decreased. Sometimes the existing Trebuchet font has a more visibly distinct bold appearance, other times it's the Tahoma. Thus, for some users, depending on the type of display, available fonts and zoom settings, it could actually make something which was working just fine suddenly look worse.

(on windows with most browsers the ctrl-plus and ctrl-minus keys change the zoom level, though I think Opera may not need the ctrl key).

There's also the italics rendering, which appears more squashed-together with Tahoma which decreases legibility for me at least).


(As an aside, I used to dislike with a vengeance the default font we were obliged to use for company documents at work. I can barely say it now, but times new roman used to have this problem built-in, some strokes appeared thick and bold, while others looked thin and spidery, all within the same word. How anyone else could live with it I don't know.)