Typography

Typefaces (or Fonts). The intermaweb is full of them; some nice, some not so nice. Faruk Ates has recently posted a blog entry about the differences between serif and sans-serif typefaces and their use on the web. However, the article has brought me to an interesting question:

ClearType or no ClearType?

Windows XP allows you to select a better form of on-screen font rendering called ClearType within it’s display properties. This basically makes on-screen fonts a lot prettier. However, this feature is only available in Windows XP and is therefore limited to a select audience. For this reason, should we, as designers, have it turned on? Surely this could result in illegible fonts on our work for some systems that we’re just not aware of!

Personally, I keep ClearType turned off - but only because I spent many years working on a horribly archaic Windows 2000 system and couldn’t get used to ClearType when I upgraded. However this means that, whilst I’m working, my fonts are rendered in a more common format - allowing me to better design for a wider audience.

So, what’s general consensus on this?