[Design] Fonts for the Web UI

[John Townsend]

I think that Zeldman has some discussion on this in his book.  
Basically, you're limited to what the user has installed on their  
computers when the OS is installed. Counting on anything above that  
is bad news.

You also have to code your CSS in a way that provides fallback  
depending on OS or you have to have OS/Browser specific stylesheets  
(I seem to recall that you can list the fonts in order and in the  
case of Windows or Mac specific fonts, those will fail on the  
opposite platform and you'll end up with something on your native  
platform).

I can't recall where I have seen this, but I seem to recall seeing  
some sites that allow you to download their fonts and install them on  
your machine for a "superior experience." Then the stylesheets are  
coded to prefer those fonts but they fallback to common fonts if the  
special fonts aren't installed.

Not sure if we want to go that route, but its an interesting idea. ;-)

--> towns


On Aug 9, 2006, at 4:23 PM, Matthew Eernisse wrote:

> Jeremy Epstein wrote:
>> It may actually be easier to handle the font fallbacks than you  
>> think, but it depends on the chandler selections. for example, I  
>> believe tahoma is not supported on mac and is probably the best  
>> loking copy font on windows. I would degrade fonts as
>> tahoma, lucida grande, arial (to use a mac example) this should  
>> give the desired result.  Its really not that painful to get it to  
>> work right. I can show you an example if you like. Sometimes its  
>> better to show.
>
> Tahoma is indeed supported on the Mac. I believe it's installed  
> along with MS Office -- which is where you get Verdana as well.  
> They're both on my Mac here, and I did not install either of them.
>
> As you say, doing font fallback in CSS is not painful. The  
> annoyance is in hoping the order you choose will somehow ensure  
> that your per-OS font choices fall into place. And unfortunately  
> you don't always know what fonts may or may not be installed  
> despite what the OS is.
>
> Although having said that, after a bit more research, it would  
> appear that the chance of a Windows user having specifically  
> 'Lucida Grande' is virtually nil. They'd have to go out of their  
> way to find and download a converted-to-Windows version of it. So  
> if the issue is just making sure the Mac people get that Mac-only  
> font, we could put specifically 'Lucida Grande' first. Then there  
> ought to be no worries about the Windows Lucida fonts with  
> ClearType turned off.
>
> The only real issue then would be the problem of the designers not  
> seeing the same thing that developers and users see -- e.g., label  
> widths and other strings of text wrapping or not wrapping, and so  
> on. If we think that's worth the cost of getting a specific font  
> for the Mac folks, I'm happy to try that.
>
>
> Matthew
>
>
>
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