Why I use Times New Roman when everyone says to use Georgia (and other Web-design adventures)

OK. I've finally come to a decision. I'm in the process of redesigning my site for the fourth time and in addition to the layout of the pages, there is the question of what font to use. And I'll tell you now: I've labored over this issue for a while.

But first, let me tell you about all the other decisions that lead to this most recent redesign. The previous redesigns were prompted by the fact that, off the top of my head, I commited no less than five major design "sins" in my page layout according to Jakob Nielsen's book, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity (actually they might not all come from this book, some of them may have come from other sources)..

1. I used frames. Which on older browsers is an absolute problem and on newer ones still a pain in the ass. It seemed like a good idea, a logical splitting of the window into its separate functions, but other than the browser problems, there's an aesthetic one: you're no longer looking at a single, continuous "page".
2. My text ran the full width of the page. In order for text to be easily readable, it must be in a thin column. Why do you think newspapers are formatted this way?
3. I used Flash. If the user doesn't have the plug-in required, is he or she going to take the investment in time to download it, just to see your site? This is debatable since Flash is practically a standard and, of course, some sites are purely Flash driven. Still, I wanted to create something that everyone could enjoy.
4. I had a "Skip Intro" intro, which was, of course, Flash. What's the point in forcing the user to skip through my terrible (no, I'm not being modest, it was crap) animation? Even if the site was an award-winning Flash showcase, why force the user to watch the intro every time?
5. I didn't use web-safe colors! This is a right of passage for anyone designing a site, to learn and obey this rule, no questions asked. Lynda Weinman was the leading proponent of the 216 colors that were usable cross-platform without dithering. Recently, the guys at Webmonkey were daring enough to conduct tests of their own to determine if it was still necessary to adhere to this rule, given the advances in technology (and thus, a general increase in number of colors displayable).
6. My site was ugly. I picked up a garish shade of yellow for the left frame (bad, see #1) and had no concept of using tables for layout. Consequently, there was no layout, just a straight sequence of words and pictures.

That last one is too general to be included in Nielsen's book.

But back to the font issue. According to every designer who is vocal about fonts at all, the most readable screen type overall is Verdana. But if you must use a serif type, Georgia is your best bet. Microsoft was gracious enough to commision Verdana and Georgia from Matthew Carter. These are fonts designed specifically for the computer screen (as opposed to print, as most fonts are). But yet, this is not what you see in your browser by default (yes, you can set your browser to display any font you like as the default font, but many sites nowadays override that setting).

So what am I going to do?

I'm going to let the user decide, and in most cases, he or she will keep the default which is Times New Roman.

Why?

Inertia. You see, I experimented with different layouts using Verdana and Georgia and while they may be more readable, they look awkward to me. This is probably because so many pages on the net use Times New Roman.

I'm used to it. It is the standard.

Maybe it takes a second less to read the copy if it were set in Georgia (leading, in Joel on Software's view, to less "little frustrations"), but it lacks the familiarity that Times New Roman has. And that familiarity, to me, adds aesthetic value that more than compensates for the font's slightly poorer readability.