Serif or sans serif? For continuous reading in print, serif fonts are generally more readable than sans serif. However, on the web, the opposite is true. Serifs are tiny, subtle strokes which, on screen in a small size, become a rather crude series of little square bitmaps. Their absence makes the font more readable.
BTW, it's not a coincidnce that the top 10 sites (e.g):
www.yahoo.com www.msn.com www.google.com www.passport.net www.microsoft.com www.ebay.com www.offeroptimizer.com www.amazon.com www.fastclick.com www.go.com
all use sans-serif. These big guys hire graphic designers. I'd really push for boost, as a whole (docs/web pages), to switch to sans-serif.
My message, at least, was about long stretches of text, not about websites with a few phrases. I'm OK with sans serif for headings, links, table of contents, and what have you. Interestingly, one of the companies you linked to offers both a browser and a word processor that by default use a serif font. Do you own a single book that is printed in a sans serif font? There is also such a thing as x-height interacting with legibility. A font like Georgia (an MS "core font") is great for on-screen reading IMHO. I'm not sure what fonts were compared. Times vs. Helvetica (or Times New Roman vs. Arial) would not be a fair comparison. Bottom line: surely your browser's default setting is to use a sans serif font; I use a serif font; why override that setting? Regards, Rogier