The Best Fonts for Making PowerPoint Presentation Slides

The fonts that you use in PowerPoint slides do play some role in making your presentations successful. The typeface should be readable and font size should be large enough so that people at the back have no problem reading the text.

Here’s some expert advice on selecting the right fonts (font family + size) for using in PowerPoint (or Keynote) presentations:

Guy Kawasaki: Guy says that your PowerPoint presentation slides should contain no font smaller than thirty points or just find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size.

"Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well."

Seth Godin: He recommends picking up a font other than Arial for presentations.

"Hire a pro, get a font you love and stick with it. Don’t change fonts over time (at least not often)… The right font becomes your handwriting."

Scott Hanselman: Scott, a great presenter and geek, recommends Lucida Console font, 14 to 18pt in bold for PowerPoint presentations.

"This [Lucida Console] is the most readable, mono-spaced font out there. Courier of any flavor or Arial (or any other proportionally spaced font) is NOT appropriate for code demonstrations, period, full stop. "

Garr Reynolds: The world’s best know presentation expert says that san-serif fonts are generally best for PowerPoint presentations, but try to avoid the ubiquitous Helvetica.

"Use the same font set throughout your entire slide presentation, and use no more than two complementary fonts (e.g., Arial and Arial Bold). Serif font are said to be easier to read at small point sizes, but for on screen presentations the serifs tend to get lost due to the relatively low resolution of projectors."

Related: PowerPoint Presentations: Avoid Last Minute Surprises

And finally, do watch this excellent presentation by Garr Reynolds that he recently delivered at the Google office.

Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta1 Released - Download From Microsoft Website

Microsoft has released the first public beta of Internet Explorer 8 for Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2.

Following are the download links for IE8 mentioned on the Microsoft IE8 Readiness website.

1. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Window XP SP2

2. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista

This release is essentially for people who want to make sure that their websites or web applications do not breaking in the upcoming IE 8 release that contains some key changes.

Update: The download links for IE8 were returning a 404 at the time of writing this story but am sure that’s just a temporary glitch.

Default Print Margin in Word Documents and our Environment

When you create a new document inside Microsoft Word 2007 using the default settings, the page margins are set to 1" indicating the non-printable space around the edges of the page. In case of Word 2003, the default print margins are higher by a quarter-inch.

A study indicates that decreasing this default print margin width in Word from 1.25 inches to 0.75 inch would result in average paper savings of 4.75 percent. And you just don’t save on paper but also trees and money.

As most Microsoft Office users are less likely to fiddle with the "factory defaults," actress Tamara Krinsky has launched an online campaign called "Change the Margins" that will urge Microsoft to reduce the default printing margins from 1" to .75" so that Word becomes a more environment-friendly software. Her mantra:

Narrower margin settings = more text/page = less paper used.