Web Designers: Not Everyone Uses A Mac

There’s a new trend in web design that I’m already getting sick of. Designers, listen up! I know you love your Apple products and it’s great that you’ve found so much inspiration from their designs but please, for the sake of people who aren’t using OS X or Safari, make sure your web designs look good on other operating systems too.

Stats Speak For Themselves

Unless you’re selling something Apple-related (iPhone & Mac apps, etc.), chances are you’re going to have a decent amount of traffic from people who aren’t running OS X. Shouldn’t you make your design look nice for those users too? Check your Google Analytics visitor info and you’ll see that a lot of people still use Windows (gasp!).

Stats Speak For Themselves!
UPDATE: Just to be clear, the stats above are indeed for DevGrow, a site marketed towards web developers and designers. I checked a few of my other websites, including the last 400,000 visitors for a site that’s not as targeted, and Windows XP was unequivocally the dominant platform (for that site, 90% use Windows, of which 60% use XP).

What to Avoid

Most of my complaints stem from websites that use certain fonts that are illegible at certain sizes and with certain effects applied to them. Now, I’m not asking you to abandon your typographical instincts, just test out your design on Windows or Linux to make sure it looks decent. I don’t think I’m knowledgeable enough to suggest the perfect OS-friendly fonts stack, however there are many articles out there that discuss it.

A handful of websites are able to somewhat pull off using exotic fonts, like Elliot Jay Stocks:

Some Can Pull It Off
Apple has positively inspired a lot of great designers and I admire the bulk of it, especially if they look good on any computer (Tapbots I’m looking at you!).

Parting Thoughts

I’m just ranting off from my personal experiences – can anyone else relate to this sentiment at all? I’m still relatively new to web design so maybe I’m missing something here, or maybe I should just turn on smooth fonts in my Windows Display options, but do I really have to? For some reason, I kind of like my Windows fonts they way they look – does that make me a bad person?

And if you’re curious, I use either Windows XP or Ubuntu for work. For everything else and when I’m traveling, I use my 15″ Macbook Pro.

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David

I have a Mac and a Windows box side by side for testing many different browsers at once, it’s not uncommon for me to have six browser open, three and three, side by side. I also do the initial design work on the Mac, move it to Windows to tune the colors and fonts (Windows seems to yield the most color and font surprises), then dump it back to the Mac … How’s that for cross platform awareness?
mcgoooo

The only way in wish tapbot manages to have nice fonts is imae replacement, a rather intensive hack, the world has to move on from crap font rendering..
http://www.leafhoney.net Steve Adams

I’d rather push my exotic fonts on users whether they look good or not in hopes that users will eventually push their browser vendors (primarily microsoft) to provide better font hinting and anti-aliasing.

The only time I have problems with type on the web is when I’m using the windows operating system. That needs to be fixed so badly.

http://devgrow.com/ Monji

Hey Steve, thanks for replying. It’s great to want browser vendors to improve their products but I’m not sure if that outweighs meeting the needs of your visitors/users. It certainly isn’t for businesses, as every visitor can potentially be converted to a paying customer.

What’s worse is that browser vendors take forever to make these kinds of changes. I don’t think it’s fair to make your users suffer for that duration, especially if a large portion are using Windows.

http://kylegetsspam.com/ kylegetsspam

No random Windows user is going to have Helvetica. Helvetica looks *terrible* rendered by Windows — hence why that comparison image looks like shit. Even if a designer specifies Helvetica, nearly all Windows users are going to get Arial instead, and Arial looks fine on Windows.
http://kylegetsspam.com/ kylegetsspam

WHOA. It stole my comments from reddit and put them here. Weird. Now I sound like a broken record. Oh well.

http://devgrow.com/ Monji

The power of BackType! I appreciate the comments though, you brought up some good points. I’ll try to find some other examples but you’re right, I have installed a lot of fonts on my Windows machine so the font stacks don’t degrade as nicely.

http://www.designbyadmiral.com/ Doug S.

I don’t know any designers who make sites that look good on OS X but shit on Windows, unless you’re talking about people how make sites that look amazing in WebKit, great in Firefox and shit in IE. This is because IE is shit. I’m not designing for the lowest common denominator, I’m designing for the people who have the best and then making it work for the rest of them.

Otherwise I’d just as well only build things that work in IE6 and I would rather shoot myself in my head.
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Max Tsukino

“I’m not designing for the lowest common denominator, I’m designing for the people who have the best and then making it work for the rest of them.”

there are no words to express how sorry I feel for you and those poor souls that decide to hire you…

http://devgrow.com/ Monji

I agree with you on that one!

Bálint Molnár

wtf? I use a Windows and a Mac as a designer and I see no difference. :O
http://www.joshuarussell.com.au Joshua Russell

This post annoys me.

Maybe if Microsoft got their act together from the start by using an open source engine instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, a lot more websites would look better in IE.

http://devgrow.com/ Monji

Hey Joshua, thanks for replying. The sites look different in Firefox and Chrome too, not just IE.

http://twitter.com/roxeh Roxanne

Anyone claiming to be a web designer should know off the bat that the websites they create should be cross-browser compatible and also platform compatible. Why would you want your client’s site only to be viewed by a handful of people, especially if you created it?
http://nataliav.me Natalia Ventre

I use Windows (Vista) an Elliot Jay Stocks’s site looks just fine, how did you take that ugly screenshot?

http://devgrow.com/ Monji

Hey Natalia, I used FF3 on Windows XP to take that screenshot.

http://ryanriatno.com Ryan Riatno

I’m using FF3 on Windows 7 and it looks fine and smooth :)

kris

I agree with what you say. It shouldn’t matter what platform or browser the visitors use, they deserve the very best but most sites do look better when a Mac is used :-)
Monji, bite your tongue when looking at this one -> sjobs.me Use different OS and browsers.
This trend you’re referring to is going to annoy a lot of people and move everyone towards using a Mac. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, it depends how you look at it.

http://devgrow.com/ Monji

Hey Kris, thanks for replying. I tried out your link and was told I needed a webkit-based browser (I was using FF3 on XP). While I applaud the effort of these designers to push open standards, this makes zero sense for people who are utilizing the web for business (which is the point I was trying to get across). Your visitors are your customers and your customers drive your business, why alienate or ignore even a small portion of them? It’s OK for a site like sjobs.me – he’s obviously not in it to make money (I think?) – but for a SaaS site or someone selling a product, browser and OS compatability are absolutely crucial.

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http://flashgames.name gus

why not??

I got two words for you:

“Right Click”
http://www.seniorwebdesigner.com Mohammed Alaa

First thank you very much for this article i was planning to write about the same subject also. i think for us as web designers we shouldn’t limit our self to a specific platform .

http://devgrow.com/ Monji

Thanks Mohammed, I appreciate it!

http://kilianmuster.com Kilian

The problem is that to me and most of the designers I know, just about *any* Website looks ugly as sin on Windows, due to the bad font rendering (and the poor selection of fonts availabe) so even as a typographer myself, I simply fail to see the minute differences between fonts that look only hideous in contrast to others that look petrifyingly hideous on Windows. It’s not as easy as you point out in your article.

Of course you are right that designers need to make Websites usable and readable for everyone, but if the OS and its font rendering makes this almost an impossible task to begin with, who are we to blame if we don’t catch the peculiarities between puke-ugly and sufferably ugly?
http://metadata.pl/ Metadata

I must admit I have had a lot lot of work to prepare our company website’s to have exactly the same feeling on mac and pc.
Marie

You’ve got to be kidding me! You’ve got it the other way around, bub. It’s the notorious Windows ‘designed’ sites that fail to take into account other platforms like Apple and Linux. Not only are windows-centric sites mostly on the ugly side, they also don’t play well with the other kids in the playground.
JT

I’m relatively new to the web design game but I’ve been quite surprised by how many designers I’ve met that decide to ignore their analytics.
If a significant percentage of visitors are using IE/MS OS how can you ignore this. Especially when it comes to fancy non-standard fonts.
Cross browser testing is a must not an optional afterthought.

http://devgrow.com/ Monji

I wholeheartedly agree!

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http://bka.co.nz Maak Bow

RE Font rendering.
It seems many peeps are print designers only or something and have little concept of the web medium. I have been successfully designing now for web for 10 years, but I used to design for print hence the following analogy.

Would you ever design a print job for a particular paper stock if you knew most of the job would be printed on a different stock that would have problems rendering your design leading to bad bleed or thin lines dissappearing? NO. If you did your client would probably sack you.

Yes Mac Os have their own hinting engine that overall makes fonts look better, but if you are specifying a non web-safe font (web-safe fonts are the ones we are pretty sure are on all systems) using a font stack or @fontface, you MUST check what it renders like on all systems BEFORE you specify it. Many fonts are currently being re hinted because of growth in @fontface use.

Blaming the 90% of users systems, users browser or Os choice is a poor excuse. Many people don’t even know what a browser is let alone that they have a choice of them or that some browsers offer a better/different experience. All they see is badly aliased fonts.

Please give us good looking type.

http://devgrow.com/ Monji

Thanks for the eloquent response Maak, I completely agree with you.

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http://www.tompepper.com tom pepper

we are still waiting for PC/Windows/Internet exploder to catch-up. Maybe we should all move to a system that actually works.
Jay

I mainly design in a Windows machine at work, and use Mac at home for play more or less, I’ve used it for design before though and it is more enjoyable but that’s probably because I am in the comfort of my own home more than anything. There is however a calming element about the Mac, just so silent. Sad that I require so many Windows applications for work so can’t use Macs there :( I guess it’s pretty much true what they say “Windows for work, Mac for play” at least in my case anyway… my Mac can’t even open spreadsheets I need to edit… It can be a pain being a Mac owner with a technical career, guess I’ll have to get Windows on boot camp… ah the Mac’s first virus. :P
http://unquietly.tumblr.com KD

I agree with Marie. I think that there’s something about the Mac interface that encourages people to think a bit more about aesthetics and design. I think that this is less because of the Apple hardware, and more because people with strong aesthetic tendencies tend to be drawn to the Mac as a platform. The Mac platform is extremely orientated to maximise visual appeal & design.

Windows, in contrast, looks a bit designed-by-committee. Windows’ type rendering tends to look jagged, too, even with ClearType anti-aliasing switched on. I just find Windows ugly, unusable for long periods of time and counterintuitive.

I don’t think that you require a Mac in order to be a good web designer, but the environment of the Mac can encourage it.

Apple pays meticulous attention to design and layout in the OS, and a lot of Mac users (me included) are looking for that. If you’re throwing up your hands and saying ‘I can build a cheap PC for less; who cares how the Mac looks?’ or ‘it’s just a tool!’, you’re placing other qualities over aesthetics. As a DESIGNER, aesthetics is pretty important.
http://www.salesforce.com DongerMouse

Your site looks like shit in every browser. Who do I get to whine at?
http://devgrow.com/ Monji

Thank you, that is exactly what I was trying to get across! It doesn’t matter what platform or even browser you’re using, if a significant percentage of your visitors have difficulty with your website, chances are they’re not going to buy your product.
Paul

Well we see a screenshot above with the same browser ona different platform. The font problems are absolutely platform based. Not browser based.
Because browsers use your system’s fonts.

So no, it’s not browser based.
Wendy

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