About Web Safe Fonts

When you buy a computer the operating system will come with a standard set of licensed fonts installed - which are common on most computers (see the list below). Some programs (like page layout programs) may install additional fonts that are not standard or common. When a browser renders a HTML web page, the web page specifies a font that should be used. The browser will search through the locally installed fonts and use that font, or, if it is not installed, a substitute default font will be used. Thus, specified fonts are not a sure thing and your web page design may not be constant on all platforms.

In theory it is possible to specify a globally located font style on the Internet, however the implementation is impractical, complex, prohibitive, and most likely expensive.

If your are designing a Flash site you may use any font as the font will be vectorized or embedded in the flash file, which will be rendered by the browsers flash plug-in. The drawback to Flash is that it is textually inaccessible to search engines and indexing, and is very difficult to update dynamically as opposed to traditional HTML layout.

PDF documents can embed fonts in the document and are independent. PDF's can be textually read by searchers and indexers provided that the text has not been converted to a graphic, which is a common mistake in PDF document creation.

A common work around in HTML is to make the text into a graphic. Words that are graphic files also cannot be "textually read" by search engines and indexers, but their <alt> and/or <title> tag can specify what the graphic says. Used sparingly, stylized headings, buttons, or other elements can be made graphically but it is probably not a good idea to use large text areas graphically. Additionally, graphic files are much larger than text and will add to the total file size, possibly effecting the download time.

A good test to determine if something can be textually read is, if you can highlighted it and extract/copy it to the clipboard, and it shows up as text there - then is it text and can be searched and indexed.

Windows fonts / Mac fonts / Font family
Normal style Bold style
Arial, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif Arial, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Arial Black, Arial Black, Gadget, sans-serif Arial Black, Arial Black, Gadget, sans-serif
Comic Sans MS, Comic Sans MS5, cursive Comic Sans MS, Comic Sans MS5, cursive
Courier New, Courier New, Courier6, monospace Courier New, Courier New, Courier6, monospace
Georgia1, Georgia, serif Georgia1, Georgia, serif
Impact, Impact5, Charcoal6, sans-serif Impact, Impact5, Charcoal6, sans-serif
Lucida Console, Monaco5, monospace Lucida Console, Monaco5, monospace
Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, sans-serif Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, sans-serif
Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua3, Palatino6, serif Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua3, Palatino6, serif
Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif
Times New Roman, Times, serif Times New Roman, Times, serif
Trebuchet MS1, Helvetica, sans-serif Trebuchet MS1, Helvetica, sans-serif
Verdana, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif Verdana, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif
Symbol, Symbol (Symbol2, Symbol2) Symbol, Symbol (Symbol2, Symbol2)
Webdings, Webdings (Webdings2, Webdings2) Webdings, Webdings (Webdings2, Webdings2)
Wingdings, Zapf Dingbats (Wingdings2, Zapf Dingbats2) Wingdings, Zapf Dingbats (Wingdings2, Zapf Dingbats2)
MS Sans Serif4, Geneva, sans-serif MS Sans Serif4, Geneva, sans-serif
MS Serif4, New York6, serif MS Serif4, New York6, serif

1 Georgia and Trebuchet MS are bundled with Windows 2000/XP and they are also included in the IE font pack (and bundled with other MS applications), and are common in Windows 98 systems.

2 Symbolic fonts are only displayed in Internet Explorer, in other browsers a font substitute is used instead (although the Symbol font does work in Opera and the Webdings works in Safari).

3 Book Antiqua is almost exactly the same font that Palatino Linotype, Palatino Linotype is included in Windows 2000/XP while Book Antiqua was bundled with Windows 98.

4 These fonts are not TrueType fonts but bitmap fonts, so they won't look well when using some font sizes (they are designed for 8, 10, 12, 14, 18 and 24 point sizes at 96 DPI).

5 These fonts work in Safari but only when using the normal font style, and not with bold or italic styles. Comic Sans MS works in bold but not in italic. Other Mac browsers seems to emulate properly the styles not provided by the font.

6 These fonts are present in Mac OS X only if Classic is installed.