HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
The choice of font and the availability of font faces can be some of the
most challenging aspects of web design. There's a reason that most sites
you'll visit appear in Times New Roman, Verdana, or Arial, and that is
because there just aren't that many quality fonts installed on enough
computers to be reliable options for web designers. Some of that has
changed over time, and in the following sections I've outlined a few ways
to select typefaces for use on the Web.
Operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android
typically are bundled with a set of preinstalled fonts. Some extremely
common applications such as Microsoft Office install additional font files.
There are no truly ubiquitous fonts for the Web, because even the most
common fonts can be disabled or removed by the computer's owner,
but these are some of the most commonly available fonts on desktop
browsers:
■
Serif typefaces: Times New Roman, Times, Georgia, Palatino Linotype
(Palatino on OS X)
■
Sans-serif typefaces: Verdana, Arial, Arial Narrow, Arial Black, Helvetica,
Impact, Trebuchet MS, Tahoma
■
Monospace typefaces: Courier New, Courier, Andale Mono, Lucida
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