I generally agree with your comment, I'll just reply to some specific points (by the way, thanks to you and to the other commenter who replied to my comment, good points all across).
> People are used to Comic Sans. That doesn't make it a good choice.
Sure. Familiarity is not a sufficient condition. I was assuming well designed fonts for reading several paragraphs.
Comic Sans is suitable (and well designed) for comics. But it is so overused everywhere that other fonts would be preferable for this - I know it seems I contradict myself since I'm also stating that familiar fonts are better, but I think there's a difference between such fonts and more neutral fonts that need to be used for several paragraphs. And I believe familiarity for the more neutral fonts can help because you don't have to "decipher" the font anymore.
> Some designs call for something that stands out in a unique way.
Indeed. I was assuming a standard web page, or a standard web app here to convey information or be functional. For such pages, I don't think it matters if the font is not exactly at the same size when rendered as when designed. The page is already going to be rendered on widely different screens and dispositions and its design should be reliant on such changes. Maybe choosing the default sans-serif font (for screens) with the default size is best for accessibility: you can be reasonably sure it will be displayed well for users with their settings.
Now, with font stacks, you can leave out the outliers and pick a font size that's not at the edge of readability.
> People are used to Comic Sans. That doesn't make it a good choice.
Sure. Familiarity is not a sufficient condition. I was assuming well designed fonts for reading several paragraphs.
Comic Sans is suitable (and well designed) for comics. But it is so overused everywhere that other fonts would be preferable for this - I know it seems I contradict myself since I'm also stating that familiar fonts are better, but I think there's a difference between such fonts and more neutral fonts that need to be used for several paragraphs. And I believe familiarity for the more neutral fonts can help because you don't have to "decipher" the font anymore.
> Some designs call for something that stands out in a unique way.
Indeed. I was assuming a standard web page, or a standard web app here to convey information or be functional. For such pages, I don't think it matters if the font is not exactly at the same size when rendered as when designed. The page is already going to be rendered on widely different screens and dispositions and its design should be reliant on such changes. Maybe choosing the default sans-serif font (for screens) with the default size is best for accessibility: you can be reasonably sure it will be displayed well for users with their settings.
Now, with font stacks, you can leave out the outliers and pick a font size that's not at the edge of readability.