Georgia Font - do most computers have it?

Question about fonts

[pat_s]

I'd like to use Georgia, with Times being the next choice, I guess. The thing is that with the design I'm working with, Georgia looks good (IMO), Times, not so much. Courier would be a better second choice for looks, but the fixed width seems to be not as readable for the larger blocks of text. So, I'm just wondering if most people are likely to have Georgia.

[deejay]

I've got it with a standard MS Windows and Office 2000 installation

Couldn't vouch for any other systems though.

[Visit Thailand]

There is out there in the www a comprehensive table of the fonts most widely used on computers will try and dig out the url for you.

[Axacta]

Check papabaer's links in this thread.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[papabaer]

Thanks Axacta! That's the resource.

One of my own favorite font-families consists of the following: Georgia, "Book Antiqua", Palatino, serif; - this gives good cross-platform font options. Georgia is truly a gorgeous font, and like Verdana, it was created for the Web.

Georgia is a typeface that provides clarity at low resolutions on the screen. It was designed to be "easy" on the eyes and is far superior to Time Roman in readability. It is available for Windows and for Mac, the installed user base ranges from 72/76% though the actual percentage should be even higher on newer computers.

[rewboss]

Giorgia is one of several so-called "Websafe" fonts -- "websafe" because they are installed along with Microsoft Internet Explorer (as well as other MS products), available on both Windows and Macs, freely distributed (can be downloaded from the Microsoft website) and, for the most part, developed for ease of on-screen reading. As I recall, the "websafe" fonts are:

Times New Roman
Giorgia
Arial
Verdana
Trebuchet MS
Impact
Courier New
Comic sans

Wingdings is also installed along with MSIE, but I believe is only available for Windows platforms.

[pat_s]

Thank you very much! I'm going to chance my fonts to "Georgia, "Book Antiqua", Palatino, serif;" as papabaer suggested. And I'll bookmark that site, too.

[bird]

"websafe" because they are installed along with Microsoft Internet Explorer (as well as other MS products)

Shouldn't that be rather called "Windows user safe"?
Bill Gates didn't invent the web, ya know. That was Al Gore... ;)

[luma]

Cross platform font survey results [codestyle.org]

[rogerd]

The survey results suggest we should all be designing sites in Comic Sans... a whole new look for the web!

[pat_s]

Especially on those moody techno sites. :)

I have to confess, though, I like Comic Sans in normal weight - not in bold - and I actually considered it just for links and maybe small headers, because the look I'm going for is kind of lighthearted, minimalist and hand drawn in a pen and inky kind of way. I did want just a whiff of sophistication, though, and Comic Sans just didn't quite fit the bill for that.

[rewboss]

Shouldn't that be rather called "Windows user safe"?

As I mentioned in my post, those fonts are freely available for both Windows and Mac platforms. And Internet Explorer for Mac is not uncommon (and actually does a much better job of CSS than MSIE for Windows).

The survey results suggest we should all be designing sites in Comic Sans... a whole new look for the web!

The survey suggests that Comic Sans is the most widely used. I believe that's because Frontpage thinks it's the default font for the web, so I guess most Comic Sans sites are of the "Hi, this is my website, and here's a photo of me skiing" variety.

[mivox]

Wingdings is also installed along with MSIE, but I believe is only available for Windows platforms

Wingdings and Webdings are both available for Mac. I have both... they either came installed with the system, with IE or with Word. (Most Mac users will have IE... even it they throw IE away, they're unlikely to throw away the fonts too.)

[europeforvisitors]

>>I believe that's because Frontpage thinks it's the default font for the web, so I guess most Comic Sans sites are of the "Hi, this is my website, and here's a photo of me skiing" variety.<<

FrontPage doesn't insert font tags unless the user has chosen a specific font.

[Axacta]

>The survey suggests that Comic Sans is the most widely used. I believe that's because Frontpage thinks it's the default font for the web<

Also, you can set the default font in FrontPage to anything you want. (I'm pretty sure mine was originally set to Times New Roman.)

[rewboss]

Oh right. I wasn't entirely sure -- I knew that Frontpage lets you choose whatever font you want (and doesn't tell you that the fonts in question have to installed on visitors' machines, not just your own), but from experience, most sites I've seen that use Comic Sans are Frontpage sites.

[rpking]

I'm not too sure I believe the results of that survey... 1 in 4 windows users don't have Times New Roman? Shirley not...

[rewboss]

Uh... read the survey carefully. It doesn't say 1 in 4 Windows users don't have Times New Roman installed, it says 1 in 4 websites use Comic Sans.

[rpking]

Is this the survey [codestyle.org] we are talking about?

If so then the faq [codestyle.org] seems to confirm my interpretation...

[rewboss]

Well, heavens... I must be reading too many surveys...

OK, well, you know what this is, don't you? This is a survey of reported fonts. They asked people what fonts they had installed on their machines. The FAQ mentions one of the implications of this:

For instance, Times New Roman has a relatively low frequency because it is the default font for many Windows Web browsers and some survey respondents may not realise it is present on their system.

So yes, the results are horribly skewed.