WEAVING TALES, WEAVING WEBSITES:
Websites 101

Fonts

Be careful using fancy or "non-standard" fonts in your web pages. An elaborate calligraphy-style font might look great on your page, BUT ... if the person viewing your page does not have that same font installed on their computer, their browser will use the default font (in most cases, Times New Roman).

So what looks like

on your screen will instead look like

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

on theirs. 

It won't affect the actual text content of your pages, of course ... but as you can see, the appearance is somewhat different than what was originally intended.

Most sites use one or a combination of the following three standard fonts, which nearly everybody has installed:

The following fonts are now getting more common, since Microsoft started including them as pre-installed fonts on most recent PCs' Windows operating systems. While not everyone has them, they are gradually becoming as common as the three above, so you can feel "reasonably safe" using them on your pages:

Verdana:
Comic Sans:
Georgia:
Impact:
Trebuchet MS:

(A collection of the "newer" standard web fonts — including the five listed above — is available for free download from http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/default.htm.)

You can also give a browser a couple font options, depending on which ones are installed. For example, if you type "Rockwell,Verdana,Arial" in the Font box (in the FrontPage formatting toolbar),

you'll essentially be telling the browser, "If you find the Rockwell font installed, display my text in that font. If it isn't, display my text in Verdana. If all else fails and neither of those fonts is installed, use Arial instead."

One last note about fonts:  Refrain from using too many different ones in your site. It's best to choose one or two and stick to those choices throughout your pages.

Content copyright © 2002-2003
R. Hardy Garrison / Tell-Tale (de)Sign