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Web Fonts

Many aspiring web designers design a site on their computer which looks outstanding.  Great use of typefaces.  Script fonts in just the right place.  The typeface fits their logo just perfectly.

But then they view their site on another computer.  All their beautiful script fonts are now plain Times New Roman.  What happened?  What can we do about it?

As an aside, this site specs Georgia as the primary font with Times New Roman and serif as the backups. 

The Problem
The issue is that the web designer above designed a site using fonts that were installed on their machine, but not the second machine.  When a browser come across a font it doesn't have access to it goes to its default, which for PCs is usually Times New Roman.

So, what can we do?
The best bet is to stay with the so-called web safe fonts.  These are Arial, Helvetica, Comic Sans, Verdana, Tahoma, Times, Times New Roman, and Georgia.  Most of these are all displayed as graphics below so you can see what they are supposed to look like.  I didn't have Helvetica or Times on my computer, so I couldn't do graphics for them.  But Arial and Helvetic are very similar and Times and Times New Roman are very similar.  Under each graphic is text set to the same font.  If you have that font installed it should look the same as the graphic.

Samples 

Arial typeface sample

This is Arial, This is Arial, This is Arial. 

 

Comic Sans Sample
This is Comic Sans, This is Comic Sans, This is Comic Sans.


Tahoma Sample

This is Tahoma, This is Tahoma, This is Tahoma.


Verdana Sample

This is Verdana, This is Verdana, This is Verdana.

 

Georgia Sample
This is Georgia, This is Georgia, This is Georgia.

 

Times New Roman Sample

This is Times New Roman, This is Times New Roman, This is Times New Roman.

Options
So, what do we do if a font that we really like isn't on this list.  Your best bet is to make a graphic of the font.  That's what I've done with the samples above.  Just be careful.  A graphic takes much longer to download than text and doesn't have the same search engine benefit that text does.
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