Michael Doyle | Blog

Design – Choosing Web Fonts

This article covers the basics of using fonts on web sites, basic but important stuff:

http://www.admixweb.com/2009/08/02/things-to-consider-when-choosing-font-for-your-website/

Web Design – Typography

I've usually just relied on Verdana and eyeballing layouts when taking typography into consideration. At the moment, I'm living and breathing typography for the website I'm currently creating. It's a simple website, but I'm focusing on the rules for typography on the web, web safe fonts, spacing, leading, etc. It's one of my biggest weaknesses when designing websites so I'm researching as much as possible into it at the moment. Some interesting sites I've come across are:

Basic rules for web typography:

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/02/10-web-typography-rules-every-designer-should-know-2/

Browser safe fonts:

http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html

Fonts bundled with Mac, Windows, Adobe and Office:

http://media.24ways.org/2007/17/fontmatrix.html

Embedding custom fonts with Javascript:

http://typeface.neocracy.org/

Smashing Magazine has a great article on 50 different web typography tools:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/27/css-typographic-tools-and-techniques/

Design – Typographic Desk Reference

The Typographic Desk Reference looks like a very handy reference book for designers.

Some sample pages are included on the site.

http://typedeskref.com/

Fonts – Web Safe

Here is a list of web safe fonts that are commonly packaged with all platforms.

font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Arial Black', Gadget, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;
font-family: 'Comic Sans MS', cursive;
font-family: Courier, monospace;
font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-family: Garamond, serif;
font-family: Georgia, serif;
font-family: Impact, Charcoal, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Lucida Console', Monaco, monospace;
font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif;
font-family: 'MS Sans Serif', Geneva, sans-serif;
font-family: 'MS Serif', 'New York', sans-serif;
font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;
font-family: Symbol, sans-serif;
font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;
font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
font-family: Webdings, sans-serif;
font-family: Wingdings, 'Zapf Dingbats', sans-serif;

This list was found here

CSS – Web Text Visualizers

CSS Font and Text Style Wizard is a handy online tool that shows you the different font attributes in CSS and shows how they affect text.
Typetester is a similar tool, but with further functionality.

Windows Font Explorer

Windows Font Explorer is a small utility that allows you to scroll through all your installed fonts and see how they look in different sizes and applied to different text.