When web site designers talk about web safe fonts, they refer to the different fonts which are extremely common on most versions of Mac, Linux, Windows, etc. This means the fonts may be viewed by more or less, everyone as they are compatible with most web platforms. When a web page loads, the browser (any of Opera, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari) tries to write text to the screen using a specific font that is available and stored on the computer running the browser. If the font is not on the computer, then the browser will not be able to display the font and the web page will be text-less.
What would cause the non-display of text when you know that your computer has innumerable fonts installed? The reason is because the 2 popularly used operating systems (OS) today are Windows and Mac OS X. Both have many pre-installed fonts of different types. There are only 10 fonts that are compatible with both Windows and Mac – Arial, Comic Sans, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Palatino, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS and Verdana.
Those 10 fonts are referred to as web-safe fonts because whether it’s a Windows or Mac OS, the text will show on the web page. If a web designer uses Calibri on the webpage, Mac users will not see the text; in the same token, web site designers using Andale on the webpage, Windows users will not see the text either. Arial or Georgia and the other fonts can be seen by both systems.
Web Safe Fonts for Mac OS X and Windows OS
- Arial. It is one of the most common types of sans serif font and is the default font for Windows, too. However, it appears to be plain and dull.
- Times New Roman. This is the most common serif font and it remains to be Windows default font. It appears to be a serious and formal font and is dismissed as old-fashioned
- Comic Sans. This is an informal and friendly font, which is similar to the ones used in comics.
- Georgia. This was introduced by Microsoft for online reading, and appears to be a modern and professional font, one which can be used with most types of websites
- Verdana. It is another widely accepted sans serif font, and is one of the clearest fonts in terms of readability.
- Courier New. It is a mono-spaced slab serif type designed to resemble the output from a strike-on typewriter.
- Impact. The font is intended for headlines and has only limited use in text applications.
- Palatino. It is the name of a large typeface family that began as an old style serif font.
- Tahoma. It has a narrower body like Verdana, less generous counters, much tighter letter spacing, and a more complete Unicode character set.
- Trebuchet MS. It is a humanist sans-serif typeface.
Presenting The New Fonts of the Web
Because having all websites in the world be rendered in Arial is boring, designers and developers sought for new ways to use non “web-safe” fonts on the web. One of the easiest ways to use new fonts for the web is through Google’s Web Font Service. They currently have more than 570 fonts ready for use. Choose from Sans-Serif, Serif, Display, and Handwriting fonts.
To use these new fonts on your website you just need to visit the Google Fonts interface and add the fonts you want to use then follow the onscreen instructions.
It is vital for any web designer to know the web safe fonts they can use for their web page design. Specifying fallback fonts or generic families of font will substitute the chosen font if ever it is not compatible with the user’s browser. Hence, the previous problems of not using web safe fonts that leads to having no text displayed on a user’s browser is already avoided.
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