More on Segoe UI in Windows 8

Note: the following is based on the Windows 8 Release Preview (build 8400) and may not accurately reflect the final version of Windows 8. I’ll update this post if there are changes in future builds.

Updated: The fonts have been updated in the public beta (Windows Consumer Preview) and release candidate (Windows Release Preview) and I’ve changed the tables below to reflect this. I was also made aware of some additional information about changes to Segoe UI, including new stylistic sets and support for ligatures: you can read more at Subacme.

Further to my earlier post about Segoe UI Light in Windows 8, I’ve done some more research into the changes to the Segoe family of fonts. The Fonts class in the .NET Framework was helpful for retrieving information about the fonts.

First off, Segoe Print and Segoe Script and their bold variants have not been modified and are still labelled version 5.02 and 5.00, respectively. All existing variants of Segoe UI have been updated, and there is one new variant: Segoe UI Semilight. The latter is in fact used as the caption and small caption font in Windows 8 – Windows Vista and Windows 7 used Segoe UI (Regular). The Windows Phone 7 platform includes Segoe WP Semilight, and Segoe UI Semilight seems to be a superset of that font.

Apparently new in the Windows 8 Release Preview are three italic variants: Segoe UI Light Italic, Segoe UI Semibold Italic and Segoe UI Semilight Italic.

The following tables summarise the differences in glyph and character counts between the Windows 7 and Windows 8 versions of the Segoe UI font family:

Segoe UI Regular

  Windows 7 Windows 8 Developer Preview Windows 8 Consumer Preview Windows 8 Release Preview
Version 5.01 5.12 5.16 5.24
Glyphs 2899 4281 4490 4516
Characters 2658 3283 3423 3404

Segoe UI Bold

  Windows 7 Windows 8 Developer Preview Windows 8 Consumer Preview Windows 8 Release Preview
Version 5.01 5.12 5.15 5.24
Glyphs 2899 4290 4428 4442
Characters 2658 3283 3421 3401

Segoe UI Italic

  Windows 7 Windows 8 Developer Preview Windows 8 Consumer Preview Windows 8 Release Preview
Version 5.01 5.10 5.15 5.22
Glyphs 2381 2478 2597 3077
Characters 2130 2180 2299 2525

Segoe UI Bold Italic

  Windows 7 Windows 8 Developer Preview Windows 8 Consumer Preview Windows 8 Release Preview
Version 5.01 5.10 5.15 5.22
Glyphs 2381 2478 2597 3077
Characters 2130 2180 2299 2525

Segoe UI Light

  Windows 7 Windows 8 Developer Preview Windows 8 Consumer Preview Windows 8 Release Preview
Version 5.00 5.12 5.15 5.25
Glyphs 2380 4036 4178 4236
Characters 2131 3090 3230 3211

Segoe UI Light Italic

  Windows 8 Release Preview
Version 5.22
Glyphs 3089
Characters 2525

Segoe UI Semibold

  Windows 7 Windows 8 Developer Preview Windows 8 Consumer Preview Windows 8 Release Preview
Version 5.00 5.12 5.16 5.24
Glyphs 2380 4089 4228 4242
Characters 2131 3144 3231 3211

Segoe UI Semibold Italic

  Windows 8 Release Preview
Version 5.22
Glyphs 3089
Characters 2525

Segoe UI Semilight

  Windows 7 Windows 8 Developer Preview Windows 8 Consumer Preview Windows 8 Release Preview
Version N/A 5.12 5.15 5.24
Glyphs N/A 4034 4175 4189
Characters N/A 3090 3230 3210

Segoe UI Semilight Italic

  Windows 8 Release Preview
Version 5.23
Glyphs 3089
Characters 2525

Segoe UI Symbol

  Windows 7 Windows 8 Developer Preview Windows 8 Consumer Preview Windows 8 Release Preview
Version 5.00 5.33 5.46 5.55
Glyphs 3090 5122 6785 6846
Characters 2864 4547 5092 5217

Supported Unicode Blocks

For further information about which Unicode blocks are supported by the Segoe family of fonts, you can download my extended analysis here:

segoe-analysis.7z
2,825 bytes; SHA-1: DFFA40934DB3305054C40AF3FD6E7224F5CF1EFB


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4 responses to “More on Segoe UI in Windows 8”

  1. […] for a heads up from David Warner, Microsoft has been slowly bumping up the version number of Segoe UI from 5.01 in Windows 7 to 5.12 […]

  2. […] on licensing or commissioning a custom font — and has used before. Segoe was featured in certain Windows 8 UI elements and, while not particularly exciting, shows a respectable bit of dogfooding on Microsoft’s […]

  3. […] on licensing or commissioning a custom font — and has used before. Segoe was featured in certain Windows 8 UI elements and, while not particularly exciting, shows a respectable bit of dogfooding on Microsoft’s […]

  4. […] for a heads up from David Warner, Microsoft has been slowly bumping up the version number of Segoe UI from 5.01 in Windows 7 to 5.12 […]

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