Are You Aware Of The Fonts You Can Use On Your Website?
Let’s cut right to the point today. Unlike opening up your word processing software or graphic design program and creating exactly what you have in mind, selecting from a plethora of hundreds of different attractive fonts to use, the way fonts work for your website is quite bit different. In order to maintain compatibility across the widest variety of web browsers and devices possible, there are strict standards, rules, and guidelines that must be followed on the web.
This Current Practice Is Here To Stay.
Basically, even though new technologies for using different fonts in web design are on the brim of reality, for the near future, best practices will still demand the use of just one of a few web-safe fonts. While the list is slightly different depending on PC vs. Mac use, the most commonly utilized web safe fonts include:
- Arial
- Helvetica
- Courier
- Georgia
- Lucida
- Tahoma
- Times
- Times New Roman
- Verdana
- And a few more…
Again, it’s slim pickin’s, but these fonts are considered to be universally safe to use in web design—meaning that they’ll render reliably (or at least similarly to how they’re supposed to appear) on almost all web browsers and devices.
The Upcoming Promise Of CSS3
There are some cool new features and capabilities coming forward with the advent of CSS3, including the ability to use a wide variety of fonts; the future of fonts in web design looks bright indeed! But again, there’s a catch. It’s great technology, but until it goes completely mainstream, which could take years and years, it’s not really all that reliable.
Of course, there are also a few other tools and techniques that can be used to “implant” a certain font you’d like to use onto a website. The thing is, they’re just not going to work for everyone—in fact, they very well might not work for most. For the time being, in order to be compatible with mainstream web browsers, it’s important to specify and design around the standardized list of fonts.
This isn’t to say that it’s not impossible to present new fonts on the latest compatible web browsers, it’s just that you’ve still got to use backup. A designer doing so will have to plan, design, and fully test the compatibility of using a cutting-edge modern font option with ensuring scaled-back compatibility with older generation browsers. It’s more work, more time, and naturally, more money.
Isn’t There A Better Way?
Unfortunately, right now there really isn’t. Some will use graphics to present the fonts of their choice—and appearance-wise, this works great. However, even though it’s perfectly okay to do in some circumstances, there are also several caveats to using graphic-based text components on a website. Two of the main fallbacks include causing significant problems with Usability and SEO.
Fonts are important. Typography has been a staple of graphic design (and the field’s ancestors) for hundreds of years. Make it attractive and don’t clash by overusing fonts in your design, but also, keep it as simple as possible to be on the safe side.
Tags: CSS3, fonts, Web Design
