<div dir="ltr">Yes, currently a user has to have the font installed on his/her computer in order to see it in the font you specify. There ARE ways to work around that, but it's not simple and straightforward. There are new (suggested?) standards that will (maybe) allow special, non-"standard" fonts to display in a user's browser even if the font is not installed on the device... i.e. it will download the font from the server for the purpose of displaying that page or website. But I don't think that's the norm. Yet. <div>
<br></div><div style>The other, more convoluted work-around is a server-side script (e.g. PHP) which converts the text on the page to a graphic, using the font, which is installed on the server. Like I said, convoluted work-around. It also increases server overhead and slows page-serving. Not that most of our sites get the kind of traffic that a <a href="http://target.com">target.com</a> get! </div>
<div style><br></div><div style>Paul Bruesch</div><div style>Stillwater, MN</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 6:36 PM, Richard W. Bushey <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rbushey4@embarqmail.com" target="_blank">rbushey4@embarqmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">One additional reason to not go "hog wild" with specialty fonts is that, to my understanding, there are only a few families of fonts that are "web safe" fonts, meaning that most browsers can view them properly. I tried downloading a new font that I used on my truck for advertising, but when I went to use it on my website, I found that even though it viewed great on my computer (because I had the font installed), that others were having issues viewing it. Their computer reverted to some other font, like Times New Roman, or Arial, or something that it could deal with.<br>
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Someone more knowledgeable than I could correct me on this if I'm wrong, but from what I understand, the person viewing your site must have the same font installed on their computer for your page to view correctly as you designed it. Times New Roman is likely to be installed on most if not all computers and is likely one of the safest to use. If I download a cool new font, or I have a newer computer with nice neat new fonts on it...if I use one of those for my website, then the person viewing my website must also have that font installed on their computer already. If they don't, then their computer has to fall back on something else. The problem with that is that every font has different size and spacing issues, so when their computer converts it, it may mess up all the formatting on the page and your website looks like junk to them...text out of place, throws pictures out of line, etc, etc. So, it is best....from what I've heard and experienced, to stick with pretty common fonts that most everybody would have.<br>
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I personally have used Arial for all sites I've build and have not had issues....that I know of anyway.<br>
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