What font do you use?

for main website text

[HelenDev]

I don't know if this has been asked before, or recently, but I was wondering what typefaces people prefer these days on web pages.

I've generally plumped for Arial for main body text, but I've heard it said recently that this now looks old fashioned, and that another sans-serif font might be better.

I don't necessarily want to jump on the Verdana bandwagon, but what other options are there?

[limbo]

You've about summed it up - Verdana and Arial (& Helvetica on Mac) are your two main options for sans serif - they have the widest coverage for installed fonts that can be used for body copy. Others, like comic sans (blech!) and Impact have equally wide coverage but were designed as display fonts, and like many of the windows font-families are the uglier in-laws of the pro versions. However there is nothing to stop you using other fonts and specifying a wider family in your style sheet. Some that are commonly used are Trebuchet, Lucida Sans, Tahoma, Century Gothic... all are pretty well supported

Times New Roman (& Times on Mac) and Georgia are the most common serif choices (Georgia being more elegant but less widely supported) with Palatino, Bookman Old Style & Book Antiqua getting the nod for varieties sake.

A basic style sheet with wider font sampling could look like:

h1 {font-family: Lucida Sans, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif;}
p {font-family: Century Gothic, Verdana, Helvetica, Sans-serif;}

Edits to font-weight and letter spacing can make a great deal of difference to the quality of display too.

It is definitely worth mentioning that the CSS should be tested with and without the lesser supported fonts - letter form, leading (line-height) and character width & height can be markedly different between typefaces so substitute fonts could throw a layout.

It is also worth mentioning sIFR at this point, you can use this technique to dictate all the type on a page with less compatibility worries - however it could slow performance for body copy and does rely on flash/JS being installed.

[futureX]

arial +/- verdana

[mrLenin]

I use Georgia/Arial readable fonts. It's not new that exotic fonts are not good idea. Only for logo use.

<snip>

[edited by: engine at 5:08 pm (utc) on Mar. 5, 2007]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]

[cmarshall]

I use san-serif (Arial, Geneva, etc.) for screen text, and serif (Times, etc.) for print CSS.

[HelenDev]

Cheers for the info guys. I guess I'll start experimenting with adding some of the other common serif fonts at the start of my font-family declaration.

[dragsterboy]

Most of the people and me use fonts like Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman. Fonts that are easy to read by the visitors. Of course if you want to be different and present your website with a classic kind of look I suggest the Sylfaen font.

[rocknbil]

that this now looks old fashioned

A comment like this is grasping at straws, body text in helvetica/arial about as timeless as possible. As for bandwagon, well, you're limited to the universal few, so if you're not on one you're on the other. :-)

I find it interesting that few sites use Times because they consider it old fashioned (too) or throw it over because of some perceived design concept. The whole idea of type is legibility, and it's been long known that the ligatures help align the eye and make for faster reading. That's why newsprint is in a serif font.

But I still use Arial/helvetica and verdana on most sites. :-) My reasoning for this is the sizing of sans-serif fonts seems to be more legible when reduced, serif fonts tend to look funny when scaled across various sizes.

[Frida]

I guess a rule of the finger in design is to keep your font simple, no matter if you design for print or web. Someone already mentioned - legibility counts most. That's my main reason I use Arial and Century Gothic most often. Of course, beyond simplicity, it is all about personal taste and choice.

So my advice here is take a look at many different fonts and choose those you find simple and attractive to you.

[willybfriendly]

[psychology.wichita.edu...] provides some empirical data on the subject of fonts. Good stuff.

WBF