Fonts

[tedster]

I'm wondering about how big the penetration is for those fonts Microsoft introduced a while back: Verdana, Trebuchet and Georgia (for windows). They were designed specifically for monitor display, rather than print.

I know they come with Win98. I also thought they were automatically included with MSIE downloads starting with 4.0, but I have not been able to verify this.

I've just inherited a site whose design really depends on the user having both Verdana and Arial, and they also are looking for pretty general compatibility. I'm trying to decide whether to allow this part of the design to stand, or to roll up my sleeves.

[NFFC]

I use CSS, font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; never seen it fail to hit the mark yet.

[rcjordan]

To make the pages look the same in MS and NS, I use <FONT FACE="Arial,Geneva,Helvetica"> and I've seen other sites using this with Verdana instead of Geneva.

While we're on fonts, over the years I've moved away from using the H-tag in favor of the <FONT> tag, yet I'm seeing that H1 or H2 is the odds-on pick for optimization purposes. I guess I'll have to retool.

[alwaysonline]

I think it comes with IE 4 but I can't verify it

What about Win Nt and the Netscape/Win NT combo? Is that a big percentage? Netscape/Win 95?

What about aol users?

[tedster]

I'm surprised that more hasn't been done to widen the universally available font palette just a little bit.
Just knowing that almost everyone would have a standard "poster" font like Impact, and one "script" font would go a long way toward more visually interesting text -- and trimming file sizes, since a lot of GIFs could be eliminated.

The MS initiative into embedded fonts seems stuck. Maybe their partnership with Adobe will move the whole area forward.

Back to my Verdana question, I guess it boils down to 1) How many NT systems have Verdana, and
2) How widespread is the Win95/ Netscape-only configuration.

I'm not worried about pre-version 4 browsers, since the stylesheet stuff on the site already rules out that compatibility.

[alwaysonline]

[microsoft.com ]
has a list of fonts and software they are supplied with

[tedster]

Thanks ... that answered the question. No Verdana with NT. This client gets too many NT hits, so the Verdana goes in the junk pile for now.

[NFFC]

>this page was last updated 27 October 1998

Trust me, font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

It even covers nix ;)

[tedster]

I guess I wasn't clear enough.

The site I just inherited depends on a user having BOTH Verdana and also one of the narrower sans-serif faces. The original designer set up pages where the different character widths were an inherent part of the design. I already eliminated the dependence on "Impact", but that was not as widespread as the dependence on Verdana.

I'm certainly going to continue to list Verdana in the font family list, as appropriate. But I'm going to re-do the pages where Verdana was an absolute requirement for the layout to work.

[Brett_Tabke]

Veranda carries over weel to *nix and mac's, but Trebuchet is another story. I have only seen it on windows. I think the best route would be a generic sans serif. In the end, I just don't think it is wise to get quite this detailed. Browsers are going to over ride that stuff left and right. Take your best compatible guess and hope for the best.