But I Want My Text Pretty!
So Microsoft and Apple have renewed their font licesnsing agreement. I guess it's a good thing. Fonts on Windows and OS X will continue to be relativily simliar for users on the web. We're still really limited to some fairly boring and common, if not downright bad fonts. It'd be nice if both platforms could expand their common font libraries, but I guess it's asking too much for these companies to make my job easier at no real sacrifice to themselves. So next time you want to use some fancy frilly text on your website, realize that if you want it to be text, which you should, and not an image, these are what you're limited to as far as fonts.
And yes, you can do things to 'get around this' like use images for your text (bad idea as it'll kill your search engine rankings and make it difficult to print/read/edit/copy text), or ask your users to download a new font to use the site (great way to make people hit the back button...works almost as good as basic web security to keep people off your page), and more. Those are the easy ones though. Basically if you want more than 90% of your users to see your site the way you intend, you better intend your text to use these fonts.
Ok here they are. The Windows font name, the Mac font name that we put in, if different, so that it looks close, and then the generic font family that it belongs to.
Windows Font, Mac Font, Generic Font
That's it. That's all of em. If it's not on that list, you can't use it as text and expect to have it look the same way on your websites. Now, you might look at that list and say "Hey that's a good number of options" in which case you'll make my life easier. Just keep in mind though that when you're talking with Ad Agencies, and Print Designers, they might not know this. They see the minute differences in thousands of fonts, and know what specific font and typographic setting truly gets your brand across. They're great at it, because print designers can use pretty much any font they want. Just be ready to have some nice looking text on some print pages, be reduced to these font styles above and look noticiably different. At least until Microsoft and Apple decide to release a few hundred more common fonts.
And yes, you can do things to 'get around this' like use images for your text (bad idea as it'll kill your search engine rankings and make it difficult to print/read/edit/copy text), or ask your users to download a new font to use the site (great way to make people hit the back button...works almost as good as basic web security to keep people off your page), and more. Those are the easy ones though. Basically if you want more than 90% of your users to see your site the way you intend, you better intend your text to use these fonts.
Ok here they are. The Windows font name, the Mac font name that we put in, if different, so that it looks close, and then the generic font family that it belongs to.
Windows Font, Mac Font, Generic Font
Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Arial Black, Gadget, sans-serif
Comic Sans MS, cursive
Courier New, Courier, monospace
Georgia, serif
Impact, Charcoal, sans-serif
Lucida Console, Monaco, monospace
Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, sans-serif
Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, serif
Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif
Times New Roman, Times, serif
Trebuchet MS, Helvetica, sans-serif
Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif
Symbol
Webdings
Wingdings, Zapf Dingbats
MS Sans Serif, Geneva, sans-serif
MS Serif, New York, serif
That's it. That's all of em. If it's not on that list, you can't use it as text and expect to have it look the same way on your websites. Now, you might look at that list and say "Hey that's a good number of options" in which case you'll make my life easier. Just keep in mind though that when you're talking with Ad Agencies, and Print Designers, they might not know this. They see the minute differences in thousands of fonts, and know what specific font and typographic setting truly gets your brand across. They're great at it, because print designers can use pretty much any font they want. Just be ready to have some nice looking text on some print pages, be reduced to these font styles above and look noticiably different. At least until Microsoft and Apple decide to release a few hundred more common fonts.
Labels: accessibility, credibility, findability, fonts, typography, usability
