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greenoak
11-24-2010, 08:34 AM
should picking the fonts bushman or gothic outlook be a problem for other computers to view? to be seen by anybody, is there a safer group of fonts that i should stick to? thats what my web person is telling me..or she had some doubts anyway......thanks..
ann

bacterozoid
11-24-2010, 09:28 AM
Not all users will have the fonts you want to use. The ones you listed aren't installed by default on Windows (and most likely Mac or most Linux distros), so nobody will see them. I always stick to Arial or Verdana; they are simple and easy to read.

If you need exotic fonts, you'll need to use an image to represent them and thus need to keep that to a minimum as images will increase page load times.

Edit: Here are some fonts you might want to consider

http://www.webdesigndev.com/web-development/16-gorgeous-web-safe-fonts-to-use-with-css

greenoak
11-24-2010, 09:33 AM
thanks..
....and i love veranda, so we will use that ....
we decided to use the exotic fonts on the picture part, like you said...

Harold Mansfield
11-24-2010, 10:45 AM
Here is a list of web safe fonts that are likely to be used across most platforms and browsers:
CSS Web Safe Fonts (http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_websafe_fonts.asp)

greenoak
11-24-2010, 02:10 PM
great tool...thanks!!! ann

501graphics
12-01-2010, 10:23 PM
You can also look into embedding fonts in your website, so that the user's computer loads them when they arrive at your website. Unfortunately, embedded fonts are not compatible with every web browser, and will increase page load times. The safe bet: stick to those basic fonts discussed above. If you decide to embed fonts, do a lot of research first because there are several ways to accomplish the task, with pros and cons to each method.

I hope this helps!

By the way - I also tend to use Arial and Verdana.

Spider
12-01-2010, 11:46 PM
I don't generally agree with sticking to the basic fonts mentioned (although I did so with my latest iteration.) Have you guys never been surfing the web, visiting various sites and suddenly noticed one a little different and remarked, "hmm, that's a nice looking font!"

Ann, here's the process I use --

1. pick the font you favor.
2. find the Character Map on as many different computers as you can get your hands on - in my case, I have two PCs, one with W-7 and one with XP - they have a completely different set of installed fonts.
3. look through the Character Map on the different computers and find fonts similar to the one you favor - make sure you have one or two from each machine.
4. list them in order of preference in your "font face" command so that it reads something like "Vani,Century schoolbook,Georgia,Calisto mt,Times,Times New Roman"

What happens when the receiving computer comes across that line, it will look for the first font in its installed fonts and if it doesn't find it, it looks for the next one, then the next one. It shows the first installed font it can find in its storage as the font on your website. It might not have Vani and Century schoolbook, but if it has Georgia it will render with that font.

Always end with Times and Times New Roman because all computers have those very basic fonts (and if it doesn't it will just use what its own base font is.)

In sans serif fonts use Arial and Helvetica as your last ones because those are the base sans serif fonts for all computers. Actually, I'm told that Arial and Helvetica are exactly the same but PCs call it Arial and Apple call it Helvetica, so now you have Apple covered as well.

So you can list as first any font you like, and if the computer does not have it, it will just pass it by and go for the next one.

Happy hunting!

greenoak
12-02-2010, 12:22 PM
wow!!! thats pretty amazing...
thanks

Paper Shredder Clay
12-03-2010, 12:26 PM
I discovered Google Font API - Google Code (http://code.google.com/apis/webfonts/) yesterday, you might want to check them out. Google will let you use some of their open fonts, but might not work on every browser. But definitely worth checking out.