So what are safe fonts to use on the Web?

jesusphreak

Not all fonts work across all OSes, and thus I'm hesitant to use anything other than like Arial/Verdana in my web work.

However, I noticed that Vanilla uses MS Trechubet, and many other sites use a wide variety of fonts and often-times it spices up the site a lot.

What fonts do you consider "safe" to use this day and age? And which ones do you like to mix and match on the same page (ie - using Arial and Verdana together doesn't work so well)?

Bergamot

Well the nice thing about fonts on the web is that they degrade to the next font in the list if the first font is not loaded on the user's computer. So start out with the font you really want, and pick others that will look good, and then some that will look ok, and then a really generic font that everyone has.

Unfortunately, there's no way to change the font size or weight to match the metrics of the different fonts in the list.

The MS core fonts are:
Andale Mono
Arial
Arial Black
Comic Sans MS
Courier New
Georgia
Impact
Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Verdana
Webdings

Most of these are installed on every PC and Mac (my Powerbook is missing Impact and Andale Mono; no idea if a clean install does too), and most Linux users who care about web fonts will have them as well. Also, you can usually get away with using Tahoma (similar to Verdana, but IMHO a little nicer looking), which was included with IE on Windows and OS X

But if you need something else, feel free to toss it in the list. Worst case, they don't have it, and they're no worse off than if you'd left it out entirely.

Also, you could try sifr for headline fonts.

Minisweeper

I'd suggest comic sans personally. It adds such a friendly colloquial touch to the experience.

3stripe

Tried sifr for the first time recently, twas good. Very easy to set up suprisingly, although it does a few things I don't like (change font size according to amount of text) You can test out the safe list of fonts at http://typetester.maratz.com/ really quickly

Robert Duncan

Thanks for that link 3stripe, what a great site.

3stripe

She's a beaut!

mattisfrommars

Minisweeper, Pleeeeeeeeeez tell me you're joking? Because i'm doing school work, and every-fucking-thing is in comic sans. Aparantly, comic sans means "handwritten" "spoken aloud" "a bit risquée" and "oh, i haven't used comic sans in a while, let's make this paragraph more annoying". I was reading the background of comic sans before. Some guy was working at microsoft, and in one of the old apps they used to ship with windows had a helpful dog that spoke in comic sans. It was only meant to be used in this one app, until it got included into the fonts folder (where word can find it) and then the rest is history...

mattisfrommars

http://bancomicsans.com

Bergamot

Comic Sans is popular simply because it's one of the only informal-yet-readable fonts that comes with Office/Windows. I don't necessarily think it's a bad font; it just is overused and misused.

Minisweeper

mattisfrommars, yes, i was joking . Ditto bergamot.

Bergamot

mini: I knew you were joking; I was responding to matt's criticism.

chimaira

verdana all the way.

Minisweeper

i meant ditto asin agreeing with what you said. :P

Mark

lol @ mini I have a client that writes up all of her application specification word documents in comic sans. I've tried to explain to her how it looks really unprofessional, but she just doesn't get it.

giginger

What's wrong with Comic Sans MS?

lech

everything.