In fact, I’ve given up on Consolas already. I realised it isn’t that much different from the array of other tall fonts out there (Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, Andale Mono, etc.). Consolas is just more compact. But sementic readability and neatness is still dissapointing and forcing one to use ClearType for blurrier small fonts rather than crisp small fonts, i’d rather prefer the latter.
In this situation, Anonymous really comes in on top for me. And ironically, it wasn’t intended to be a small font to begin with, yet turns out to be a potentially great programming small font.
Anonymous is well known to be artistically nice. Yet, it’s mono-spaced. It’s known to have some weaknesses, though particularly with ClearType and general clarity/cramp collisions with touching underscores and some characters. Thankfully, in this situation without ClearType and in FlashDevelop (together with some cool dark color settings), Anonymous shines really well.
I personally like the Raize font ( http://www.raize.com/DevTools/Tools/RzFont.asp ) for my IDE, the problem with Consolas is in my oppinion, that size 10 is too small, and size 11 too large.
I am using Consolas 11pt on my work machine on Windows XP and on Vista at home. So far I think this is the best font. I don’t see any Clear Type problems, probably they was fixed in Windows XP Service pack 3.
Consolas looks fine on Mac OS X as well even without ClearType, using Apple’s anti-aliasing, as do the others in the family, although I only like Calibri, Constantia, and Consolas in roughly that order, they’ve replaced Helvetica, Georgia, and Monaco for me.
