Craig Bass, Web Design & Hosting

P.O. Box 1141
Klamath Falls, OR 97601
541-273-8735

WEB SITE DESIGN: FONT FACTS

Website Fonts

Many times, a client has told me they really like a particular font.  Unfortunately, fonts displayed in a website are generally limited to what fonts are installed on the end-viewer's computer.  For instance, one of my clients likes a font called "Busorama." Busorama is a pretty, modern and flowing font and looks very nice as a headline. 

Unfortunately, Busorama is not a common font on Windows or Mac computers.  What this means is if someone who does not have Busorama font installed on their individual computer visits her web site, all the text that is in Busorama will default to whatever the viewer's default font is.  Usually that is Times New Roman. (You can usually check to see what your default font is by clicking the Tools/Options link near the top of your browser and finding the settings.)

To avoid this and make sure that everyone sees the content in Busorama font, we can work around that issue by making the Busorama text into a graphic; essentially a picture of the words in that font style. 

Unfortunately, search engines can't read pictures, so the benefit of that content in search engine optimization is lost.

Following are the most common fonts which are generally native to Windows and Mac computers, how they appear, and the "font family" to which they belong.  Since I have a Windows PC, I can't show you how the specific Mac fonts actually appear.  There are some limitations to some fonts, such as whether they can display italic and bold variations, how they display in different systems and browsers, etc.

Windows fonts Mac fonts Font Family
Arial Arial, Helvetica sans-serif
Arial Black Arial Black, Gadget sans-serif
Comic Sans MS Comic Sans MS cursive
Courier New Courier New monospace
Georgia Georgia serif
Impact Impact, Charcoal sans-serif
Lucida Console Monaco monospace
Lucida Sans Unicode Lucida Grande sans-serif
Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua Palatino serif
Tahoma Geneva sans-serif
Times New Roman Times serif
Trebuchet MS Helvetica sans-serif
Verdana Verdana, Geneva sans-serif

 


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Craig Bass • P.O. Box 1141 • Klamath Falls, OR 97601
541-273-8735 Phone • 541-273-0146 Fax
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"The journey to a thousand sites begins with a single click."

In my years of designing websites for clients, I have come across these questions and situations many times.  On this page, I hope to give my new clients some common information they may not know about the construction of a website, its limitations, and the way things display in different browsers and monitor resolutions. The internet is NOT a level playing field when it comes to how websites look.