Originally designed by Microsoft’s Matthew Carter and with hand hinting done by Tom Rickner the true type font (ttf) Verdana was created in 1996. It was first released in version 1.01 along with Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 3.0 in August of that year.

After the initial version there have been a further three updates to the font with version 2.10 where the font became part of the Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4) and included in the launch of IE 4.0.

Version 2.31 added the € character created for the inception of a new world currency and version 2.35 included some minor table changes with no new glyphs being introduced.1

Verdana is a sans serif font that was designed specifically for the medium of the screen. As such extra care has been taken with the characters that are commonly confused in fonts not designed for screen use. These are the characters i, j, l in lowercase and I, J, & L in uppercase and the number 1.2

Below you will find examples of the Veranda font at different sizes.

Example of Verdana
Another feature of the font is that it has increased legibility from larger spacing between the letters. This plus the simplification of the font also lends itself to clarity at smaller sizes unlike other similar style fonts. You can see the font in practice below in the form of a menu from the BBC website

BBC Website
Some people like to group this font in with other humanist fonts,3 meaning that the font tries to imitate the early 15th century Roman fonts. The designers however do not feel that the font falls into this category as the font was specifically designed for the screen as oppose to recreating an old style font.4

References

1. Microsoft Typography, http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts, Accessed on 04/11/08.
2. Channel Verdana, http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/fonts/verdana/default.htm, Accessed on 04/11/08.
3. Verdana, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana
Accessed on 04/11/08.
4. Channel Verdana, http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/fonts/verdana/default.htm, Accessed on 04/11/08.