Typographical Design

Page 2 of 5

Discussion of Typographical Design ... font faces, sizes and colors.

Downloadable and Embedded (Dynamic) Fonts

Microsoft and Netscape have created solutions, although neither solution is widely used except in the Windows' Microsoft and Netscape worlds. Both solutions are based on downloading fonts.

Microsoft's solution to font portability is called "OpenType" and Netscape's solution is based on "TrueDoc." You can read about both of these "dynamic font methods" from links on the Links Page in this sub-web.

We don't like either approach at this time due to the time involved for downloading using dial-up modems. However, both approaches work in versions 4.0 and higher of Internet Explorer and Netscape. Downloadable fonts (dynamic fonts) are appropriate when the environment is controlled (i.e., an Intranet) or the target audience is appropriate to the requirement (i.e., a scientific or math font for an engineering website). If users have broadband connectivity this is a moot issue.

We will include this feature in your website if you request it. It is priced as an add-on feature.

Standard Fonts by Operating System

Each of the major operating systems (Windows, UNIX, Apple) come installed with standard fonts, some of which are suitable for web pages. These standard fonts can be used within a web page with relative assurance that they will be on the viewer's system. However, there can be no guarantee that the user has not deleted a standard font from their computer.

The table below lists the "standard fonts" by system and provides a best match for differing font faces:

Color Coding:
Common Proportional Fonts
Common Fixed Width Fonts
Common Symbol Fonts

Windows	UNIX	Apple
Arial	Helvetica	Helvetica
Arial Black	Chicago
Comic Sans MS
Courier New	Courier Regular	Courier
FixedSys	Geneva	Fixed
Impact
Lucida Sans
Marlett
Symbol	Symbol	Symbol
Times New Roman	Times	Times
Verdana
Webdings
Wingdings
	Monaco
	New York	New Century Schoolbook
	Palatino	Utopia
		Clean
		Lucida
		Lucidabright
		Terminal

As you can see, there aren't too many common choices.

Common Proportional Fonts

The two gray highlighted lines, the Times family (a serif face) and the Arial/Helvetica family (a sans serif face) are the only two proportional fonts which are common to the three major operating systems.

Common Fixed Width Fonts

The two yellow highlighted lines, the Courier family (a serif face used mostly with legal pleadings) and the System family (a sans serif face) may also be used when appropriate.

Common Symbol Fonts

The pink highlighted line is the common symbol font face.

The Internet is not designed to present high quality fonts and graceful typesetting. Sad but true. The reason for this is that in the beginning the Internet was created for viewing text documents by the scientific and military community. It is only recently that a need for higher quality typesetting has become apparent. Microsoft does provide free TrueType fonts designed for web use. These fonts can be downloaded from Microsoft's Typography web site.

The need for high quality typesetting for web pages has been solved with the creation of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS provides for most features used in professional typesetting. But, all browsers do not intrepret CSS coding in the same way, thus browser incompatability is still an issue.

More

Go to Top of Page