Open Bug 960935 Opened 10 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Breakdown: Use better default monospace fonts

Categories

(Firefox :: General, defect)

29 Branch
x86_64
All
defect

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: phlsa, Unassigned)

Details

As suggested in bug 468169, we should change the default monospaced font. I filed a new bug because this is really a desktop issue.

This is what we should do:

XP: keep the default (courier)
Vista/7: Consolas
OS X 10.5: Monaco
OS X 10.6: Menlo
(In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] from comment #0)
> XP: keep the default (courier)
> Vista/7: Consolas
> OS X 10.5: Monaco
> OS X 10.6: Menlo

These are old specs. OS X 10.5 isn't supported anymore. 

There should be a specs for OSX 10.6-10.9 and for Windows Vista-8.
You are right, that is not the most up-to-date version.

So:
XP: Courier New
Vista-Win8: Consolas
OS X: Menlo

I'm not sure about what fonts ship with various Linux distributions. I have DejaVu sans mono on my Ubuntu box which looks quite alright, but I don't know how common that one is. I think some distros in the past shipped with Vera sans, which also has a nice monospace version.
(In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] from comment #2)
> You are right, that is not the most up-to-date version.
> 
> So:
> XP: Courier New
> Vista-Win8: Consolas

This may be a bit tricky to implement, as we ship a single set of default prefs for Windows regardless of version.

One possibility might be to run a script at first-run and update time that checks the user's OS version and adjusts the default prefs accordingly. (That's already been suggested in some other bug that I don't have handy just now...)

(If we're going to change from Courier New -> Consolas, though, I wonder if we should change Times New Roman -> Cambria and Arial -> Calibri at the same time, for a more complete and coordinated visual refresh.)

> OS X: Menlo
> 
> I'm not sure about what fonts ship with various Linux distributions. I have
> DejaVu sans mono on my Ubuntu box which looks quite alright, but I don't
> know how common that one is. I think some distros in the past shipped with
> Vera sans, which also has a nice monospace version.

In general, I think Linux systems should be configured so that the name "monospace" is mapped to a suitable default by fontconfig. (Likewise for "serif" and "sans-serif".)
No longer blocks: fxdesktopbacklog
Flags: firefox-backlog+
Summary: Use better default monospace fonts → Breakdown: Use better default monospace fonts
Whiteboard: [feature] p=0 → p=0 [qa-]
Flags: qe-verify-
Whiteboard: p=0 [qa-]
Severity: normal → S3
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