I don't think it's such a good idea to default to the user's browser default. Most of these people have no idea what that is and every other site they go to sets a style and size of font for even the barest shred of consistency.

I have 5 browsers on 2 computers here all with the same default fonts set in the browser and the site looks completely different in each one. Size is all over the place and if you have ad as well it must be a mess.

Just my .02

Defaulting the font is the only way I have yet found to deal with the fact that site users are using a vast variety of screen resolutions. I can't set the font size without making it huge on some screens and tiny on others. At least with defaults most people can change the setting and have it stick. On top of that, unfortunately, the most readable font family, Verdana, displays with wild variations in size across platforms, which I think is weird as all get-out but there it is. Even a family of sans-serif resulted in a number of people complaining that they'd gotten Verdana and it was too big.

So the only real option I'm left with is either default or something universal like Arial, which is uniformly small on pretty much all browsers. And when I started out with that, in the beta-testing process, people howled about how tiny and unreadable it was and asked for a different font.

I would be willing to set it to Arial if that's really, really what the majority of users want, supposing that the majority of users can ever be bothered to actually respond to "do you want" posts or polls beforehand, which evidence suggests is not the case. But, frankly, at this point, only if someone else is willing to explain the choice to everyone who will, without fail, come and complain about how difficult it makes things.

I hear your frustration because I deal with it daily.

I think you may want to default to Arial eventually as pretty much every site I've ever worked on has done that and I think that's simply what most people are used to seeing. Maybe this crowd is sharper and will catch on about browser fonts, but I'm not holding much hope.

*sighs* I'm considering it, yeah. I know most users really don't ever learn how to use their options. I want to see what happens when the journal style I banged together comes out, which it should soon, because all of the starter themes in that are set to Arial. If there's not a huge outcry over that, I'll take that as sufficient evidence that Arial is acceptable and reset the site scheme. And probably put up a note here about how to use user styles to change it, for the browser-savvy.

Actually, what I'd really like is an in-site way to set some of the site scheme variables, like font and backgrounds. Something that would generate a style-sheet, probably. But that requires someone to poke around the rat-nest of Danga code to figure out how and where to put the picker, and how to crank in a table to store the info. If it was wordpress, I could maybe do it myself, but the lj code is such a horrible mess I have yet to figure it out.

Since we all know that some people love the Tweak logo and Tweak Says, while some people really don't, Squeaky has added my sheet that removes Tweak and Tweak Says as an alternate style to all the site schemes. This means that everyone using a browser that supports alternate styles can go to the View menu and select the "no tweak" style to get rid of those.

I love you.

And Squeaky, too!

My pleasure. *grins* I kind of like just text for the header, myself.