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Fonts > Vector vs Raster : > Font Collecting : Anti-aliasing : Using fonts : Making Titles : Effects : Dingbats

using fonts - how they appear

When I first got on the web, I fell into the trap of using fonts that other people didn't have installed, without realising that they'd show differently on other people's computers. Luckily I realised this very quickly, since I checked out my first attempt at a web-page on a variety of other computers.

The most important thing to learn when you're starting to design for the web is that in many respects, you have very little control over how your page will appear to others. To a certain extent, you have to just accept this and let it go (how zen...) - but you can certainly recommend that a certain font is used if the user happens to have it installed. This means extra testing for you - you really need to check your whole site on a computer that DOESN'T have the particular font installed, even if it's a relatively common font.

Fonts can be divided into two main groups - serif and sans-serif. Sans meaning "without" and serif being the squiggly bit at the end of a letter that's a vestige from when nibs were used for writing.

Times New Roman is probably the most common serif font. Georgia is another.

Arial is probably the dominant sans-serif font. Helvetica, Verdana, Arial are others.

Just remember that if you use anything other than a common default font, that's yet another factor that will cause variation in the way your site is viewed. For example, you might not even be seeing "Times New Roman" and "Arial" above in those actual fonts, if you don't have them installed. Most authoring packages such as Dreamweaver have groups of similar fonts that are specified as a range. ie, if the first on the list isn't available, it looks for the second similar font, then the third, then either the default serif or sans-serif as applicable. My favourite sans-serif font is Arial, so I use it a lot - even though some people will see Arial or Verdana instead.

The only way you can be sure of text appearing in a particular font is to make it into a graphic.