What's people's thoughts on fonts to use exclusively on the web?
What are the pros and what are the cons of certain fonts?
I was just thinking about using Verdana as the main text header on a webpage, is this a faux pas or would it 'work' okay?

Mark

I don't have any major issues with fonts but please use font families to make sure that people have a reasonable chance of being able to render them even remotely the way you expect your page to appear.

For easy to read content I tend to use the family Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif.

ps Don't forget I'm crap at design.

Thanks for the comment, and I understand your concerns but for me in this specific instance that'll not be an issue, as once I have the font I'm going to render the text as an image, so everyone will see the site exactly the way I want them to. (8+)

Mark

Well that would break webdesign 101, text should not be rendered as an image unless its a logo.

That's a bit of a sledgehammer to crap a walnut, as you'll massively increase the size of your site if you do that.

If you are desperate to continue down that route, there are tools that can automate it for you.

O rly?Ummm, I'd quite forgotten about that.
It's been so long since I did this stuff … very well then, I'll still need a font to use though so my original question still stands.

Mark

Sorry I thought I'd answered it. well my opinion anyway


Verdana is as safe as houses, in terms of who wouldn't have it ? And its nice and readable and "feels" modern.

There isn't a smiley which shows my horror! At least you haven't said that you'd like to use JavaScript to do it!

I heard he was gonna 'sticky it' here for all to see too

In which case, there really isn't a suitable smiley!

IIRC, W3C recommends these font families (each line is a new family)

arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif
courier new, courier, monospace
times new roman, times, serif

If you pick even just one from a family most computers should have it.
Having said that, IIRC the ones in red may cause problems if they are on their own.

http://cathyzielske.typepad.com/my_webl ... ne-no.html

Use comic sans everywhere.

No.

Mark

Having worked for an agency which uses graphic substitution on every website, my opinion is DON'T!

They designed sites for customers using specialist fonts, for which they didn't have the rights to redistribute the font, so they made all headings, menu options etc. out of graphics and only large amounts of body text were in font families...

As a developer, it is frustrating, and in the UK it will probably need a lot more work to make it compliant - we don't have the hoops of usability to jump through here, unless it is for government sites.

A majority of users should have Verdana available on their systems these days - some Linux distributions and older versions of Windows might not have it, but I would guess they will be a minority and they will drop back to Arial, Helvetica or sans-serif if they don't have it.