Best fonts for websites?

Hi everyone,

I've been thinking to myself about fonts for upcoming websites that our business will be creating. We usually stick with Arial and after looking at other sites, they seem to do the same. It is nice to have a change but I know about the compatability problems with websites. Would it be worth using different fonts for our new websites? If so, which are your favourite to use?

We could always implement a new font within images and banners but I'm thinking more along the lines of the main pages. So if you have a favourite font for banners and images that won't be able to be used within the main page, what are they too?

I'm interested to see what other people's opinions are.
 
You might find something like this page on browser-safe fonts handy to peruse when looking for safe alternatives to arial.

http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html
 
I'm looking to use Futura for my new branding and want to implement it on my site. After some headscratching I did some research.

So far I have found these sites which will help you incorporate particular fonts into a site:
Typekit
Desktop and @font-face fonts | Fontspring
Google Font API - Google Code
Font Squirrel | Download Hundreds of Free @font-face Fonts

the last being a generator for your own licensed fonts which downloads a folder of various font formats for you to use in your site. I'm still trying to understand how to work it into my CSS...

But anyway, another handy site found was this Code Style: Most common fonts for Windows, Mac and Linux, full font survey results which shows the distribution of fonts on Win/Mac/Lin if you just want to list the fonts to be used from your visitors OS in the CSS.
 
Cufon is pretty horrible IMO.

Non-scaling, non-selectable, non-contrast-alterable text is never a good idea :(

Build a decent font stack or get a @font-face licensed font to use.
 
Harry said:
Cufon is pretty horrible IMO.

Non-scaling, non-selectable, non-contrast-alterable text is never a good idea :(

Build a decent font stack or get a @font-face licensed font to use.

I noticed that after I read a bit more into it.
 
Vernon Lopez said:
Nowadays Helvetica used often. its very compatible and easy to viewable

Helvetica looks terrible on Windows so you might want to be cautious when using it.
 
Kevin said:
Helvetica looks terrible on Windows so you might want to be cautious when using it.
just set the font to go arial then helvetica (or vice versa). Arial is installed on ALL windows machines, but no mac's as far as I know (well not without choosing lol) where as it's the other way round in regards to helvetica
 
My fonts also now offer a web service (@font-face based) which also supplies Futura - I recently used this for a site and have been impressed - worth checking out - futura MyFonts
 
Levi said:
just set the font to go arial then helvetica (or vice versa). Arial is installed on ALL windows machines, but no mac's as far as I know (well not without choosing lol) where as it's the other way round in regards to helvetica
Both my macs had Arial installed by default. One of them is 4 years old, one of them less than a year old. So it's not only a particular generation either.

But either way, Harry blogged about a hack someone "found" a few weeks ago. Just use sans-serif instead of a complete font-stack.
 
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