I have noticed that at Google Fonts they never use fantasy as fallback class in font-family. For all script and typical fantasy fonts, they use cursive.
I wonder if this is a hint that chrome does not support fantasy as fallback class? For that to be the case, fallback font-classes would have to be handled by the browser via implemented lists for typical serif, sans-serif etc. fonts. Alternatively, the browser could query the os for such lists?
What happens when the browser needs to fallback to say a serif font on the clients system? How will it get info on the installed serif fonts?
I haven't been able to find an aswer to this, so I hope that someone here might know about it. I know web safe fonts and all that are probably about to become things of the past, but they still have some relevance.
Typefaces don't map to any generic font families mechanically. They're only categorized that way in their family names and on font listings such as Google Fonts and Adobe Typekit.
You could create a font stack that consists of a sans-serif family, a serif family, and ends with the fantasy keyword:
font-family: Helvetica, 'Times New Roman', fantasy;
And browsers would treat it the same: use whichever family comes first that is supported, or fall back to the generic family if it comes to that.
I would expect all browsers to implement at least the five generic families defined in CSS2.1 and css-fonts-3: serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy, and monospace. But which faces each generic family maps to exactly is less predictable — for one, most browsers actually offer the user the ability to change their preferred default serif, sans-serif and monospace families. And even then, the entire list of installed fonts is available for selection in every category, which suggests that even browsers can't (or at least don't) differentiate between categories of fonts.
The default preferences that a browser ships with are based on assumptions of which fonts are most likely to be preinstalled on any given system.
I can't answer why Google Fonts doesn't seem to specify fantasy in any of its font stacks.
I've set up a test case:
http://codepen.io/jaycrisp/pen/NxOrOy
.cursive {
font-family: cursive;
}
.fantasy {
font-family: fantasy;
}
I see different fonts in chrome on mac, so that shows that chrome does support the fantasy keyword. I see the same font on Safari and Chrome too.
I'm seeing papyrus for the fantasy font, which I think is a Mac OS bundled font. I'm also seeing the same font on Firefox and Safari.
I would guess that the reason google font uses cursive instead of fantasy is that if you're using such a font, you're probably going for a very specific look to your site. Replacing this font with something like papyrus is going to totally ruin it. Well, using Papayrus will totally ruin your site anyway, but that's another matter.
Related
I know this is an extremely basic and stupid question, but I seem to be having a genuinely curious problem.
When using what are supposed to be web-safe fonts like Didot, and using
header h1{
font-family: Didot, serif;
font-size: 36px;
}
my browser just displays the standard serif font.
In fact I can't seem to get it to display any web safe font, it will only display either the standard serif or sans-serif font. I know my selector is correct because I CAN change between serif and sans-serif, but I know its not displaying other web-safe fonts because I tried both Arial and Helvetica (which are both definitely web safe) and when I refreshed from one to another there was absolutely no difference in the font displayed.
I'm a complete beginner and I'm using the simplest possible beginner environment, just an html page linking to a css file which I'm opening with my browser (the url shows up as file:///C:/Users/Agent%201/Desktop/Web%20Projects/ResumeSite/index.html if that is at all relevant). I've tried opening it with both chrome and edge, same results on both
Is there something wrong with my css? Or are there limitations when just opening a local html file with my browser?
Sorry if I'm this is a really dumb question, but I really can't find an answer as to why my fonts aren't working, I've tried !important and some other weird solution I found which involves changing the selector to "header h1, header h1 *" and that did nothing.
Thank-you for any help you can provide me!
When using what are supposed to be web-safe fonts like Didot, and using...
Didot is not a "web-safe" font.
Didot is included with macOS, which may lead some web-designers to assume that it's also available on other platforms (like Windows, Linux and Android) or that those platforms have automatically-mapped equivalents (like how many browsers will map Helvetica to Arial), however that is not guaranteed.
Also, just because a typeface is included with an OS does not mean it is licensed to you to use commercially or in a website - you can be sued for publishing an OS-licensed font onto the public web without having your own font-license.
A "web-safe" font is a typeface that is broadly installed and supported by most contemporary browsers without the need for additional downloads or font installations.
Many typefaces are broadly installed, such as Microsoft's Core fonts for the web which are preinstalled on all Windows computers - and many other operating systems such as macOS either come with the same fonts or have very similar equivalents (e.g. Helvetica instead of Arial) which are automatically mapped by the browser.
The only way to determine if a font is "web-safe" is by doing your own leg-work and manually checking to see if all-or-most of your target users' devices have that typeface available. You can check font availability on Wikipedia and other sites:
macOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typefaces_included_with_macOS
Windows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typefaces_included_with_Microsoft_Windows
iOS: http://iosfonts.com/
Android: Consult Android's fonts.xml for the minimum set of stock fonts and default fallback mappings (e.g. "Helvetica" goes to "sans-serif").
You might notice that Android's font list is very... short. That's because the base Android OS isn't what ships on most peoples' phones: Google's layer on top of Android, and OEMs (like Samsung, etc) will add their own fonts on top, but I don't know where to get that list from at-present, sorry.
A "web-safe font stack" means that at least one of the fonts listed in a font-family property value can be safely assumed to be available for use, not that all of them are - nor that the first-preferred-font will be available.
And any font-family list can be made "safe" by adding a CSS fallback generic-family name to the end (i.e. specifying the least-preferred font). Those names are specified in the CSS Fonts Module and are:
serif
sans-serif
cursive
fantasy
monospace
In your case, the property font: Didot, serif is "web-safe" because it has the serif generic-family name at the end. Your visitors will only see the Didot font being used if they already have it installed on their computer, phone, tablet, etc.
If you do want to use Didot, then you need to publish it as a WOFF file and add it to your stylesheet with a #font-face rule: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/using-font-face/
I am working on a theme for a new website. We had some professional graphics help us design the theme. For the front page, they took and tweaked the Agency theme.
If you download that theme (it is free) and search for the agency.css file and open it, there is one CSS line to indicate the default font of the page:
body
{
font-family: "Roboto Slab", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
}
As we can see, the specified fonts in font-family start with "Roboto Slab", then it goes on with "Helvetica Neue", "Helvetica", "Arial", and finally, the default "sans-serif" that the browser would be happy about.
Only the "Roboto Slab" font is a "serif" font, all the others are "sans-serif" fonts...
As a designer, would you say that this is a mistake? Because if your computer does not include the font or if the font is somehow not available at the link above, it would go from a "serif" font to a "sans-serif" font... That seems wrong to me.
There are two different aspects you should consider:
Providing different font families for the same text is no longer needed in modern web.
This is a legacy technique back from when fonts were required to be installed on a machine in order to be used for rendering a web page. Since we now are able to provide fonts as css files and load them using #font-face declarations, (which I assume your website uses), the fallback only occurs when the machine rendering the website fails at loading the provided font file (this is extremely rare and, when it happens, it is likely that fonts rendering with a different face is not the most serious rendering problem of the page - so the best course of action would probably be to just reload the page).
If the second and the third font options were provided by the designer (provided they are professionals) the fonts were probably matched with your other main font and, even though it's part of a different type, it will still complement the other font well.
I'd like to point out I actually have design related studies but have turned into a professional coder over the past ~10 years.
Choosing and matching fonts is a complex process and more often than not, the right size, weight or style weigh in more than whether the font is serif, sans-serif, monotype or fantasy. There's no recipe for matching fonts and usually it involves taking a step back and looking through dimmed eyes. It's also important one also tests with multiple types and combinations of content, to make sure they all are balanced and look well.
In design, following strict rules gets you above average results, but never in the top 10%. Those are most times based on bold actions and inspiration. Don't measure the designer's work using a ruler. If you really need to, measure it in terms of user behavior. If there's an increase in traffic/response/commitment, you got a good design.
The answer you will get from a question like this will to some degree be based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. My opinion is that all important browsers support web fonts. If the web font is used correctly it will show correctly to 99.9% of the site visitors. The other fonts listed is just fallbacks for the 0.1% visitors that for some reason is not able to load the custom web font. The most important thing is that they will be able to read your content. If you would like to control the fallback font, you should choose a set of system native fonts present on all platforms. You could use courier, but that is a mono spaced font (fixed-width) and I doubt it is more readable or fancy. A sans serif is also more modern than e.g. Times and therefore closer to the modern look of Roboto Slab.
When I inspect elements on my site using the Chrome developer tool, I see the following as my element's "Computed" style:
font-family: "HelveticaNeue-Medium", "Helvetica Neue Medium", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, "Roboto", Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif
But if I scroll down further (to the bottom of the "Computed" tab) I see:
Rendered Fonts
Liberation Sans—Local file(11 glyphs)
Since my (Linux) OS must have Arial and sans-serif, I'm confused as to why Chrome would pick "Liberation Sans": it isn't even on my font-family list.
I'd blame my own bad CSS, but in theory the "Computed" tab shows the final/processed version of my rules, so however terrible my original CSS may have been, Chrome clearly sees my font-family list defined (and being applied) to my element ... it just ignores it.
Can anyone explain this mystery?
EDIT: I installed a font-checking program and it turns out that Linux (Mint) does not in fact come with an Arial or sans-serif font ... but even so, I thought browsers provided (at least) a basic sans-serif font, no matter what the OS? Is that incorrect?
Your font stack specifies Arial.
Arial is not present on most Linux systems for licensing reasons, and it is usually aliased to Liberation Sans, since Liberation Sans has the same dimensions (metrics) as Arial. The font design, however, is different (that's why Liberation Sans is usually not the default Linux sans serif font, its design is not popular).
Helvetica is another well-known legacy font name usually not present. If you try to use it in the font stack it will usually trigger all kinds of aliasing. It may even trigger the Liberation Sans alias before Arial (since Arial was Microsoft's poor-man Helvetica replacement when windows launched and has about the same metrics).
(When you create a PDF that specifies Helvetica on Windows it will usually substitute ArialMT).
If you only specify sans-serif you will get the system "best" sans-serif font, usually clean well-loved designs, but their dimensions vary widely from system to system.
Due to the number of broken web sites whose designers assume all systems ship with the same fonts, with identical pixel widths that can be fixed in the page design, font substitution is usually done on metric first, design second priorities.
The only way to get the same font on all clients is to use web fonts, but that will slow down your site due to the font download and users (not "designers") prefer fast pages. Web fonts demand to be careful about licensing and font unicode coverage, security-conscious users will block third-party downloads, and there is a lot of cargo-culting about obscure web font formats (opentype is sufficient in most browsers nowadays).
The kind of Apple maniac that thinks HelveticaNeue is the alpha and omega is usually satisfied with Open Sans as web font.
But even with web fonts the rendering will be slightly different since different systems use different text engines that all have their specifics, with some fonts working better than others for a given engine.
There are two font fallback mechanisms in Chrome for Linux. One is OS-level fallback. Another one is CSS specified fallback. The OS-level fallback mechanism returns Liberation Sans to Chrome instead of none or not found while Chrome asking if the HelveticaNeue available in your OS. Chrome takes the returned Liberation Sans and believes OS returned answer so ignores the CSS subsequent font fallback list.
I see that you have both Helvetica and Arial in your font-family properties. I'm guessing that you want Arial when Helvetica is not available...An answered question that deals with this is: two fonts
Now, if I wanted to have only one font-family, such as Century Gothic, I would do:
font-family: "Century Gothic", CenturyGothic, AppleGothic, Sans-Serif;
This is a good guide.
My question is, why do you have so many
Because Google Chrome, somethiing leave the WWW from the url, you can try to put it manually.
Especially in Unix or Mac system.
There is a font called "Futura", it works on all macs, even iPhones, but not on PCs. So on my web hosting, I have a css file called styles.css. At the top, I have :
#font-face {
font-family: 'Futura';
src: url("Futura.eot");
/* FOR IEs */
src: local('Futura'), url('Futura.ttf') format('truetype');
/* for other web browsers */
}
and in the same place as styles.css I have futura.ttf, and futura.eot. I got them both from a website, so I don't know if those two files are broken or not.
But all fonts still shows as Times New Roman on PC.
1) Make sure that the font-family value degrades gracefully:
font-family: 'Futura', Arial, sans-serif;
2) If you're hosting a copy of the font, make sure that it's on your server and the URL is pointing to it correctly. That said, if you just downloaded the font and are hoping to use it on your website, there are better ways to do this. You're going to want a web-optimized one that only includes the character sets and weights that you actually need. Otherwise, you're forcing every visitor to your site to download 200k worth of font -- no bueno. A good option would be TypeKit (http://typekit.com), which does have Futura PT.
If you're not looking to pay, the Google Web Font Repository is another fantastic resource. You won't be able to find Futura, but they have plenty of other options.
The Futura font is copyrighted, and you can legally use it as a web font only if you have made an agreement with the font vendor, directly or indirectly. See Linotype page on Futura. Contact the font vendor regarding problems in use, after double-checking that you are using the font according to the instructions.
If you find the cost excessive, consider trying to find a suitable free font that is sufficiently similar or otherwise meets your needs. There are some nice sans-serif fonts, with several typefaces, among Google Web Fonts.
This would probably be safer:
font-family: Futura, "Trebuchet MS", Arial, sans-serif;
via http://cssfontstack.com/
Also, you might be safer using a typekit so you can ensure it will show up correctly on any OS or browser. For example: https://typekit.com/fonts/futura-pt
Google's WebFont Loader allows you to pull from various web fonts.
The WebFont Loader is a JavaScript library that gives you more control
over font loading than the Google Web Fonts API provides. The WebFont
Loader also lets you use multiple web-font providers. It was
co-developed by Google and Typekit.
You should also make sure you are using the correct font name. You might have a variant on your PC. For example: Futura Book BT, Futura Lt, Futura Md, Futura Bk, Futura Hv, etc.
I actually have right now two questions:
1) What font faces are preferred for a website? Right now I really like 'Segoe UI', but it's only available on newest Windows systems like Vista and 2008 Server. So I have defined a sequence:
font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
I do not really like the look of all of them except for 'Segoe UI'. Any suggestions on what nice font could be used in addition to that? I also tried 'Trebuchet MS', it looks great on documents, but not really on a page.
2) Any way to specify with CSS different font sizes for each particular font-familiy? Like 'Segoe UI - 9px', Tahoma - 8px etc. This is probably not possible, but maybe there are some tricks?
I also know I will get lots of comments now to use relative font sizes, but I don't want that. I have some graphics in my design which are not stretchable. If the user or browser default lead to the font rendered with a varying size the design will quite soon fall apart. I prefer having design with font size limitations to not having design at all.
1) What font faces are preferred for a website?
See this page concerning safe web fonts.
2) Any way to specify different font sizes for each particular font-family through CSS?
Nope.
Soon, #font-face will be supported by all major browsers, and you'll be able to use any font you want on your website.
Until then, have a look at Cufón or sIFR.
Use the right typeface for your site. It's not as simple as saying "this is the best font for websites". Here are two quotes (read principles) from Robert Bringhurst's "The Elements of Typographic Style":
"Typography exists to honor content."
"Choose faces that suit the task as well as the subject."
On another note, unless a serif face really suits the website, sans-serif faces are more appropriate for digital media.
With regards to your second point, Phil Oye has recently released FontUnstack, a jQuery plugin which will tell you what font is being used for a given element. The element will be given a class (i.e. "set_in_gill_sans") through which you can apply specific styles for different typefaces.
Also, check out the font matrix (1.5 years old) and these well thought-out font-stacks.
1) What font faces are preferred for a website? Right now I really like
'Segoe UI', but it's only available on
newest Windows systems like Vista and
2008 Server. So I have defined a
sequence: font-family: 'Segoe UI',
Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
I do not really like the look of all
of them except for 'Segoe UI'. Any
suggestions on what nice font could be
used in addition to that? I also tried
'Trebuchet MS', it looks great on
documents, but not really on a page.
What font faces are preferred? This is a tough question. There are three main computing platforms that each have their own set of base fonts. Then, some software like Adobe Creative Suite, the Microsoft Office suite, or even software as simple as the Powerpoint 2007 viewer for XP install fonts for the user. There's lot of charts on the web that list commonly used fonts.
For a website, you're going to want to use legible fonts. Most of the screen fonts commonly used on the web are pretty legible. The fonts you mention for instance are good examples. The most legible on screen font is Verdana, although it's generally considered to be ugly. Arial is always a safe choice.
Just be careful with that Segoe UI declaration though: if a Windows XP user has that font, it probably won't be legible with anti aliasing disabled.
For headings, you can go custom and use techniques like sIFR and Cufon to replace the text with non-native system fonts.
A quick note on size: most sites tend to set a really small font size. 13 pixels really is the minimum for long texts (see relative readibility). A font with a small x-height like Times should only be used for headings or in a large enough size (e.g. 15+ pixels).
2) Any way to specify with CSS different font sizes for each
particular font-familiy? Like 'Segoe
UI - 9px', Tahoma - 8px etc. This is
probably not possible, but maybe there
are some tricks?
No, this is not possible. You can make assumptions about the browser and OS people are running via Javascript and thus make assumptions about the fonts they have installed, but it's a lot of work for a relatively small gain. I would advise against it.
Re. your font choice, I would consider usability to be a key requirement (unless you're going for a deliberately styled format).
Neilson made a study and found Verdana or Arial to be optimal choices in terms of legibility.
CSS3 will natively support downloadable fonts (you won't be promted to download, they will just work on the fly), so you will be able to use whatever typeface you want. We just have to wait for it a but since it will be available only in Firefox 3.5 and Opera 10.
You can also use classic fonts like: Arial/Helvetica, Verdana, Georgia, or even Times Roman for great visual impact. You just need to find the right font-size and contrast with other elements on the page.
Just personally, I like Verdana and Georgia, though they are only Mac/Windows-"safe". In your case perhaps it's best to select second-choice font which has the same metrics as your first choice.
Most major browsers already support #font-face so you can use any openly available font.
Google Web Fonts hosts some free fonts to choose from:
There are also paid websites like Typekit that will host paid fonts for you and let you buy them: