Cursive Fonts

Is there a small list that hits most users?

[tedster]

CSS allows for the generic font-family "cursive". From what I can see, Explorer will choose an appropriate font (as long one is installed) but Netscape will not on a PC.

But what about listing specific cursive fonts? Is there a small list that will catch nearly everyone? ZapfChancery and Monotype Corsiva seem to cover a lot of the PC territory. How about Macs? Is Apple Chancery common enough?

I'm not imagining that I can catch everyone, but I'm betting that I can top 95%. It would be nice sometimes to use more of a display font at a large point size, rather than creating a graphic and hiding a keyword, just because of aesthetics.

[David]

Tedster,
I was just working on that yesterday. My work PC has the full Ms office suite and I convinced myself that netscape 4.x just plain didn't support any cursive fonts. I did not start using a specific font list I just used the font family.
I am going to work on it again tomorrow so if you find something or anyone else can add something that would be great.
I was just going to give netscape a sans-serif font with a italic style and give up on it.

I think you are right about replacing graphics with css. I was just trying to decide if a graphic link with a good alt tag is as strong as a text link.

[tedster]

I was just going to give netscape a sans-serif font with a italic style and give up on it.

From my experiments, Netscape will use an installed font, if you name it explicitly. It just didn't support generic font-family names until version 6. And even now, Netscape 6.1 defaults "cursive" to ms comic sans, which is pretty lame in my book. IE supported both "cursive" and "fantasy" in IE3!

I think you are right about replacing graphics with css. I was just trying to decide if a graphic link with a good alt tag is as strong as a text link.

Hmmmm... If you give the graphic link a title attribute, that MIGHT be as good. But I don't think an alt tag has nearly the some clout in an algo. However, as I see it, straightforward text (using keywords) is the most dependable power you can get from a link.

I was considering using cursive fonts for headings - a place where the temptation to use graphics is strong from an aesthetic point of view. But when it comes to SEO, there is no substitute for H1 and H2 tags with real text, hence my interest in declaring fancier fonts.

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But I don't want to take this link off-topic. We're looking for the commonly available cursive fonts on the Windows and Mac O/S.

Microsoft has a typography section [microsoft.com] on their website. They're touting embedded fonts, but they also have a lot of other supportive info on fonts, including a list of Mac OS fonts [microsoft.com]. I'm just not sure which ones are cursive.

I also found this CSS "Test Drive" for fonts [danielgreene.com]. It's great for putting different browsers thorugh their paces.

[rjohara]

Zapf Chancery is pretty standard on Macs. It's been on every Mac I've every used certainly. It has a very small aspect value, though, so would tend to be illegible in small sizes. But in major headings it should work.

[typophile]

I know this is slightly off topic but on the subject of images and alt tags are you guys saying that if I put my heading text gif in an <h1> tag and use an alt tag that spiders won't see that alt text as a major section heading?

[tedster]

>> spiders won't see that alt text as a major section heading

Wow, I missed this question for a long time -- sorry typophile.

Yes, that's pretty much what I'm saying. Many engines stopped using alt text altogether when keyword stuffing took off, and I haven't seen evidence that the weight of an <h> tag extends to an alt attribute. When alt text is indexed, it seems to get about half the weight of a regular keyword occurance in visible text.

I'm convinced that the way to get the most mileage from an <H> tag is plain old <h1>Keyword</h1>, and that's why I'm looking for cursive fonts that are widely used.