Windows Vista may revolutionize e-book reading

[Bob Russell]

Windows Vista may have far-reaching affects on the way we read e-books. But not in the way you might think. It's not because of some new software package or e-book reader software. It's much more basic and fundamental and universal than that. Windows Vista is introducing some new fonts, and we may all be using them very soon.

One of the fonts is called Cambria. It just so happens that it was created to replace Times New Roman, and it may succeed with Microsoft behind it. It's a big deal, too - Times New Roman is almost ubiquitous these days, and if you use Microsoft Word to create a document, you are probably using the Times New Roman font.

As e-book affictionatos, we can't help but be interested when we hear that there are some new fonts coming out with the new Windows Vista OS. And according to Usability News, there are six new ClearType fonts coming with Windows Vista, aimed at the following uses:
* Cambria - for business documents, email, web design
* Constantia - for book typesetting, email, web design, magazines
* Corbel - for business documents, email, web design
* Candara - for email, web design, magazines, informal settings
* Calibri - for documents, email, web design, magazines
* Consolas - for programming environments

Check the full article for all the details, but the two new serif fonts (Cambria and Constantia) were compared to Times New Roman for legibility.

Using an objective measure of legibility (but only one of many possible measures), they rank the fonts in the following order:
1) Cambria
2) Constantia
3) Times New Roman

It may well be that e-book readers everywhere will have a brand new look very soon!