Fonts and the web - what's your wish list?

[tedster]

Very little progress has been made with font support on the web since Microsoft was good enough to release a set of screen fonts featuring Verdana [microsoft.com], back in 1997.

I honestly thought that by now there would a bit more choice in relatively broad market share fonts we could use. I mean, our choice is basically two kinds of sans-serif, one serif, and fixed width.

My wish list for widely installed fonts:

1. cursive/script - almost anything. Monotype Corsiva, Lucida Handwriting, or something new designed specifically for monitors, just like Verdana was.

2. display - Something for large showy use. Impact is the closest we've got, but it's pretty darned clunky looking and I think it's only around 70%. How about at least one display font with some real grace? Even Broadway would do, or Honeymoon maybe - a nice thick/thin look.

3. semi-serif - this would probably need to be designed explicitly for the screen. Full serif fonts just don't look good to me on a monitor, and yet I'd really like at least one contrasting font to Arial/Verdana/Helvetica. I think a semi-serif might be just right.

I know I'm probably screaming at the sky here, but a guy can dream, can't he? I mean, between Microsoft and Adobe, can't they just throw us another bone?

[pleeker]

I'm with you on those requests, but I'd also just like a few more options with regular screen fonts beyond Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, etc.

I've started using Lucida Grande on a couple hobby projects where it doesn't really matter how widely installed that font is ... but I'd like to know if it is widely installed.

[MatthewHSE]

I would think that, in addition to the existing "tried and true" verdana, etc., and the ever-present generic serif and sans serif, about ten more fonts would be more than enough for virtually any need. Something scripty and fancy, another one or two more like legible handwriting, a couple bold and showy, etc.

I think fonts could basically fit into six main categories:

Plain serif (Times New Roman)
Plain sans-serif (Arial, Verdana, Tahoma)
Script (Palace Script, Palatina)
Handwriting (Bradley Hand, Lucida Handwriting)
Bold (Impact, Bauhaus)
Cute (Flowers, Dogs, Cats)

Obviously, the last category is pretty much impractical for web use due to the huge variety and how specific each font in that category would be.

[tedster]

With just a bit of a push, something like Wingdings could be widely enough used. That might safe some graphic bandwidth.

Anyone know the market share on WingDings?

[benihana]

in addition to the above wishlists, id like to see wide spread browser support for anti-aliasing, as in safari.

then at least the fonts we have got will actually look their best.

[pleeker]

So true, benihana. Text is just plain ugly on a PC. I don't know much about anti-aliasing and that type of stuff -- why don't PC browsers support it like Safari does?

[Purple Martin]

For normal page text, I'm happy with Verdana and don't feel the need for anything else. For my code editors, I'm happy with Courier. Jeez I can be unimaginative sometimes. Although anti-aliasing would be nice.

[digitalv]

Personally I like the way the web is now with regard to fonts - I have the default fonts on my system, no more. If I ever come to a website that tells me I need a certain font to view it properly I surf elsewhere. If the day ever comes that fonts can be automatically installed on my system, I will disable this feature and surf elsewhere.

I'm not going to strain my eyes to read some font that looks like your 4 year old's handwriting, or Sumerian cuneiform, or both. Rather than worrying about people's systems working with the fonts you want to use, you should worry about your website working with the fonts people already have.

So my wish list for fonts is simple ... LEAVE IT ALONE :)

[MatthewHSE]

For my code editors, I'm happy with Courier.

Kind of funny . . . I've spent so much time in text editors that I've begun to think that even webpages would be easier to read in Courier! ;)

I also agree with digitalv, too many fancy fonts are awfully hard to read. But tastefully-done headers in a font that's at least legible could be a very nice enhancement to certain pages. And don't worry; no visitor to my site will ever be forced to download a font - I'll specify alternates clear down to sans serif!

[vkaryl]

Actually, depending on the site, I tend to favor "oddball" (though NOT by any means UNREADABLE!) fonts for headers etc. I usually just do them as a graphic, and compress them until they look right when displayed but don't take a lot of time to load. Doing it that way is really "cheaper" load-time-wise than using WEFT. (I posted somewhere or other a question a year or so ago, asking why WEFT files took so long to load on sites, and couldn't they be compressed somehow? The answer was, THEY ARE COMPRESSED. Ewww....)

The only problem with that solution is that finding a decent balance between "looking right when displayed" and "don't take a lot of time to load" is rather like a tightwire walker whose umbrella has just imploded....

[Leosghost]

Confession time ...

I just looked and I've got over 2500 fonts installed ..Plus eye candy and similar ...

And fontographer ...

Then I guess it goes with the business of Art and Graphics....

Anti alias would be nice tho ...

[claus]

>> market share on WingDings?

This pretty much follows the market share of Windows (in all incarnations) = around 95% usually, if your audience is "representative"

Btw, i strongly agree that browser manufacturers should do something about support for font embedding. It annoys me a lot to see graphichs used for textual content because no good alternative exist.

Questions for the font experts:

a) Is

Courier

an "open font/free font", ie. available across Linux/Mac/Windows?

b) Does a compiled list of "open/free fonts" exist, ie. fonts that are supported across operating systems by default? (i'm certainly not looking for a "free fonts" page)

---

Edit/added:

I just researched the wingdings issue. It does not follow Windows as much as it follows IE, eg. on MacOS9 with IE preinstalled you will also have wingdings, but on, eg. WinXP with everything and all you will not have Wingdings in the Firefox browser.

This is due to the fact that the Wingdings font is not Unicode, but (here's the scoop): Some of the Wingdings characters have Unicode equivalents, and these work in FF as well as any other browser that supports unicode :)

example: ☺ (U+263A - white smiling face)

G query: [google.com...]

---

edit2

- for some odd reason that particular unicode character does not work in my IE, although it does in my FF (charset=utf-8) ... so much for unicode support ;)

[edited by: claus at 1:04 pm (utc) on July 15, 2004]

[py9jmas]

a) Is Courier an "open font/free font", ie. available across Linux/Mac/Windows?

Courier is one of the original PostScript font and is installed on every Linux/BSD I've used.

b) Does a compiled list of "open/free fonts" exist, ie. fonts that are supported across operating systems by default? (i'm certainly not looking for a "free fonts" page)

Microsoft made their collection of webfonts (consisting off Times New Roman, Courier New, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, Comic Sans MS,Arial, Arial Black, Verdana, Andale Mono, Impact) available on their website with a license allowing free redistribution (not for profit, not tied to a Windows license). All modern BSDs/Linux distro support TrueType fonts, it's just a question of whether people have installed them.

[pleeker]

I'm not going to strain my eyes to read some font that looks like your 4 year old's handwriting, or Sumerian cuneiform, or both. Rather than worrying about people's systems working with the fonts you want to use, you should worry about your website working with the fonts people already have.

Jeez. Rough day yesterday? I don't see anyone here advocating the use of bizarre, non-traditional fonts in a selfish, exclusive way on a web site. In fact, I see a few posts where the discussion is about how widely installed various fonts are, so obviously we are trying to work "with the fonts people already have."

Is there something wrong with wishing for a little more variety amongst those widely installed fonts?

So my wish list for fonts is simple ... LEAVE IT ALONE

I guess there is. So much for progress and advancement.

Good thing the Opera, Mozilla, and Safari (etc.) teams didn't decide to leave it alone when Explorer conquered Navigator.

[tedster]

The gift of Verdana is one of the nicest things Microsoft ever did for the browsing public, IMO. I'm hoping against hope that something like that can happen again for a few other types of fonts. It's a big wish, because the design of a screen font is a major job for the font designer.

If you've never checked out the link about Verdana I put in the first post, check it out - it's fascinating to me, at any rate.

With font creation software in wide use, there's all kinds of free fonts and checp fonts available. But comparing those to a serious font is like comparing street code/tag soup to a serious validated, standards based website. In fact, it's probably even worse.

So my wish is for a serious benefactor - it would take corporate clout at the level of Adobe or Microsoft to pull it off.

[digitalv]

Jeez. Rough day yesterday? I don't see anyone here advocating the use of bizarre, non-traditional fonts in a selfish, exclusive way on a web site. In fact, I see a few posts where the discussion is about how widely installed various fonts are, so obviously we are trying to work "with the fonts people already have."

Is there something wrong with wishing for a little more variety amongst those widely installed fonts?

Heh no not at all ... but there are two distinct "requests" going on for fonts. One is for OS or browser manufacturers to provide more fonts than they do. That I'm OK with. The other option though is something that would let a webmaster place a font on their webserver and it would automatically download to your system when you were viewing their page - that's the one I have a problem with.

Anyway all I'm saying is I am against something that would put a font (or anything) on my system that I didn't want there. If a webmaster has the ability to install "any" font, then there is nothing that would stop them from installing one that you wouldn't like.

Side note: Did you know Linux releases don't come with Verdana?

[py9jmas]

So my wish is for a serious benefactor - it would take corporate clout at the level of Adobe or Microsoft to pull it off.

Well didn't Adobe give us the original 12 PostScript fonts? Then as you say Microsoft gave away their core web fonts, and then there is Bitstream who give away the Vera family.

[gnome.org...]
[bitstream.com...]

[vkaryl]

My wish list: a web that displays any font a website manager chooses to use exactly the way that manager chose to use it. This is self-regulation in a way: if the fonts are terrible, people won't go to that site again, rather like most of us won't re-visit the black-background with unreadable purple text combined with virulent red and pus-green bullets and buttons....

digitalv: as long as the font UNINSTALLED itself immediately, after installing so the site displayed as the designer intended, where's the beef?

[rjohara]

Oooh, very good question. I want two things:

That (1) the full functionality of good old CSS2 be available in all browsers. The font capabilities built into CSS2 [w3.org] are amazing and the best of them are just about completely unsupported. (Oh! for a working font-size-adjust property.) What beautiful pages we could have if we could write things like

 <STYLE TYPE="text/css" MEDIA="screen, print"> 
 @font-face { 
 font-family: "Robson Celtic"; 
 src: url("http://site/fonts/rob-celt") 
 } 
 H1 { font-family: "Robson Celtic", serif } 
 </STYLE> 

And (2), that there be one complete Unicode font available on all machines, so if I need to stick in a word or two of Hebrew or Chinese or Urdu I can do it without fear that little squares will show up on people's browsers.

Too much to ask? ;)

[digitalv]

digitalv: as long as the font UNINSTALLED itself immediately, after installing so the site displayed as the designer intended, where's the beef?

Getting all browsers and all operating systems to support it would be difficult, and while it's a good bet that Microsoft would allow such a thing to happen I doubt other browser manufacturers would. I could be wrong, but I could never see the various Linux releases all saying what a great idea it is. So part of my answer is an assumption that it would never be globally accepted and would basically be another "hack" that IE does and does alone, and the rest of us who aren't using IE have to look at some page with "[[===0887g$9]" written on it because in the particular "dings" font they intended to auto-load on my system would have some significant symbol attached to those characters.

The other reason is that surfing the web isn't an "experience" for me, it's all about accessibility. I'm not the type of person who has "fun" online, to me the Internet is a business tool and nothing more. I hate being in front of a computer and would rather be outside :) So when it comes to the Internet, I'm a minimalist - I like the way it is now in the sense that I don't really care what font you design your site in because I know that I'll always be able to read the text if I don't have it or can't stand to look at it.

Not to mention the search engine spamming potential that this would have. Think about it, what would stop me from making a font where the character map doesn't match the letter you're pressing? A search engine would see one thing, and you would see something totally different because the letter "a" might look like the letter "p" or "z" with a custom font. If you don't think spammers would do that think again, they have already come up with much more complicated tricks than that to get to the top :)

[Purple Martin]

Another reason against fonts that install/uninstall themselves is bandwidth. The majority of internet users are on dialup, including me when I'm at home, and I for one really don't want another way for web developers to make pages even slower. Please think of the modems!