Web safe fonts

Corrosive said:
Just Neue. I believe Helvetica is standard.
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Not sure about that, I know that when declaring Helvetica in your CSS it's probably a good idea to use the sans-serif declaration so then Helvetica gets served to Macs and Arial to PC because Helvetica looks pretty poor on PC.

So just declare something like this:

Code: 
html {
    font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; 
    font-size: 1em /* Or whatever your base font-size is...*/
}

Remember, Helvetica and Arial aren't the same...
 
chris_17 said:
Not sure about that, I know that when declaring Helvetica in your CSS it's probably a good idea to use the sans-serif declaration so then Helvetica gets served to Macs and Arial to PC because Helvetica looks pretty poor on PC.
Click to expand...

You are right, just been through my 'out-of-the-box' font list and no Helvetica either.
 
Arial is horrible. Helvetica isn't. :icon_smile:
And that is all I have to contribute here :icon_frown:
 
Genuine question, why do people hate Arial so much? I don't think it's amazing or anything but I don't hate it, and it and helvetica are very similar.
 
Helvetica is not a standard Windows font like it is on Mac. Arial is like the cheap rip off of Helvetica so is the closest you will get for PC users.
In your css you could specify the font to be Helvetica, Arial and then Sans Serif (this is what I would recommend). I'm talking standard helvetica here, not Neue.

If you really dont want to risk some users seeing Arial then you could look at serving up a speciffic font which closesly matches Helvetica Neue such as TeX-Gyre-Heros
You'll have to ask yourself if its really worth the extra bandwidth since users will be downloading the typeface before it is rendered. I think if a user has Helvetica on their computer then fair enough the site will look better as the font will be rendered on the page. You could argue that only a designer is going to be savvy enough to tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica in which case they should already have it on their computer.
 
if u wanna use a custom font and its not standard use cufon. only downside is you cant highlight text and copy it (but it could be a good thing in some cases)
 
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