New Microsoft Typefaces
Those of you who are familiar with me and my opinions know that I am
not that of a big Microsoft fan. I usually try to avoid using their
technology wherever possible - not because I bear some sort of personal
grudge against them, but because I like to try new things, and for I
think that currently Microsofts competitors offer more value because
they have to try harder in order to compete. (Think about virii).
That's the reason why I completely switched to Mac OS X at home, and
Linux (in that case Gentoo) at work. And it works really good. I do
admit that I'm definately very productive in my Microsoft-Free
environment (Although I do have a copy of Internet Explorer running in
a wine-shell in order to do the usual testing & bugfixing).
Now, preparing Longhorn, Microsoft created new Typefaces which are especially suited for on-screen reading. I really dig that idea, and I've to admit that I hope that there will be something similar coming from either Apple or Novell/IBM/Redhad because the current set of Typefaces on Win/Linux/OSX do certainly contain a broad range of possible improvements.
With all the upcoming UI-Improvements in Longhorn (Avalon:
Transparencies, Dropshadows, Vector-Interface, Hardware-Accelerated) I
reckon that adding those beautifull new fonts will really help making
Longhorn visually more pleasant for the normal user.