Embeded Fonts + Helvetica

[Andrew Thomas]

First of all, is Helvetica a standard font on the PC, my mac has it but ive looked on 4 different PC's and cannot find this font?

If not, where can i get helvetica font for free?

Within my website, what happens if a user is looking at my site who also does not have helvetica on their system? Is there a way to embed the font?

thankyou

[dcrombie]

Normally in CSS or FONT tags you use a list of fonts:

eg.

BODY {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

The browser then uses the first font listed that is available on the system. The last entry, "sans-serif", is a family of fonts in a similar style.

There are ways to embed fonts but none are widely used.

[limbo]

Arial is the PC version of the MAC font Helvetica - there is very little difference between the default kerning, leading and tracking and the pixel dimensions of the letters are almost identical. So you page will look very simlar with either Arial or Helvetica. I think newer I/Powermacs have Arial but not with newer pc's - as dcrombie says just make sure you have specified helvetica as CSS value so that mac users have is as alternative to arial or else it will set to browser default - which is often a serif font (Times New Roman in IE)

Ta

Limbo

[Andrew Thomas]

Ah, usefull information - thanks to both of you

Andy

[grahamstewart]

When listing alternative font families it is important that you always add a 'generic' font as the last option. These generic fonts should be defined for any browser that supports CSS so they give you a reliable fallback option that keeps your page readable.

The five generic font families are:

  serif 
  sans-serif 
  cursive 
  fantasy 
  monospace 

More information on the generic font families can be found at [w3.org...]

[vkaryl]

grahamstewart, you are a PRINCE. You nearly always provide good info - even when I didn't know I needed it!

Thanks.

[R1chard]

For font embedding, try www.truedoc.com by Bitstream. Probably not worth it for a standard font, but it works a dream with fancy custom headline fonts.

[grahamstewart]

Can't see why that would ever be worth it. Using truedoc (or another kind of font plugin) increases the time a new user will have to wait for your page, plus it means they will have to accept a download just to see your page properly.

Personally I would never install an unrequested plug-in like this and I'm pretty sure I'm in the majority here.

Plus it only works on IE and Netscape.

[DrDoc]

serif

sans-serif

cursive

fantasy

monospace

And, if you specify

fantasy

you should also specify yet another generic font as a fall-back after that since many browsers do not support "fantasy".

[Andrew Thomas]

thank you - you've all been a great help

[choster]

www.truedoc.com by Bitstream

An Internet Explorer-only technology, and not even one much promoted by Microsoft any more, with plans for future support unknown.

[R1chard]

^ huh? It's not MS. It's an independant 3rd party technology. And what's more, it's completely built in to Netscape 4 as standard (so no plugin required).

And, of course, if the browser doesn't support it (Opera etc), then it doesn't matter anyway, since the text will still display on screen ok. Nothing will be lost.

[zoobie]

If it's like a menu or something, you could consider flash in which the font is kinda instantly embedded...or so I just read in another post here about flash.

[limbo]

font is kinda instantly embedded

Kinda ;)

They are mapped as a vector image when the file is coverted to swf.

Image editors can also give you this control - where you can use any font you like, convert the native file to a browser compliant one and dispaly it as a graphic - eg GIF.

But not good practice for large amounts of text.

Ta

Limbo