WebspaceWorks Resources
In Fonts and Web Typography
- Legally Get Vista Fonts from Microsoft, No License Required
- Font Families & Web-safe Fonts: The Point of Penultimate Resort
- Visual reference to 19 fonts for cross-platform web design
- Fonts for web design: further comparison of cross-platform dependability
- Aspect values and x-widths for fonts
- Reliability of “Web–safe” fonts
Tools: Reliability of “web–safe” fonts
The following tables (updated: 11 February, 2007) summarise cross-platform reliability for fonts that are commonly held to be safe for use in web-design. The percentage figures originate from the Codestyle font surveys for Windows, Mac and unix/linux and, in brackets, from the visibone font survey. Sample sizes are presented in column headings for each platform as for [Codestyle (Visibone)] surveys.
Both surveys have problems, discussed in codestyle font survey questions for some of its common issues. Weaknesses aside, these surveys represent the best currently available information on the subject of how available fonts are across platforms.
The standard list of “Web-safe” fonts, with the exception of symbol and dingbats fonts) is limited to the nine listed in the first table.
| Font | Windows [2306 (614)] |
Mac [597 (164)] |
Linux [277 (22)] |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arial | 93.90% | (100%) | 95.73% | (99%) | 68.88% | (82%) |
| Arial Black | 95.49% | (100%) | 95.57% | (97%) | 53.47% | (45%) |
| Comic Sans MS | 93.94% | (99%) | 92.00% | (96%) | 50.15% | (45%) |
| Courier New | 93.49% | (99%) | 91.47% | (96%) | 69.49% | (83%) |
| Georgia | 84.47% | (96%) | 91.20% | (96%) | 51.96% | (45%) |
| Impact | 93.53% | (99%) | 86.40% | (84%) | 51.66% | (45%) |
| Times New Roman | 78.74% | (100%) | 88.67% | (98%) | 61.33% | (82%) |
| Trebuchet MS | 91.05% | (98%) | 91.47% | (96%) | 48.34% | (45%) |
| Verdana | 94.27% | (100%) | 92.80% | (99%) | 54.38% | (45%) |
While support is good across Windows and Mac platforms, the notion of these being “Web-safe” begins to look a little shaky from the perspective of linux/unix.
Previously some more traditional print fonts could also be relied upon and this remains particularly true for unix/linux platforms where the microsoft web fonts can’t necessarily be relied upon to the same extent as on the other two operating systems.
Table 2 extends the set of “Web-safe” fonts to include these three fonts (Courier, Helvetica & Times).
Andale Mono is included here because it is mentioned on at least one list of “Web-safe” fonts encountered in researching this, though the reported figures certainly beg the question “Why?”.
The Bitstream Vera triplet (Sans, Sans Mono & Serif) of fonts are also included as they are now installed with many current linux and unix distributions, however they are clearly not to be relied upon for either of the other two platforms.
| Font | Windows [2306 (614)] |
Mac [597 (164)] |
Linux [277 (22)] |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Courier | — | (94%) | 95.20% | (99%) | 84.73% | (100%) |
| Helvetica | — | (82%) | 95.47% | (99%) | 70.89% | (91%) |
| Times | — | (82%) | 85.87% | (99%) | 61.67% | (91%) |
| Andale Mono | — | (11%) | 82.67% | (74%) | 45.02% | (41%) |
| Bitstream Vera Sans | — | (12%) | — | (9%) | 76.23% | (18%) |
| Bitstream Vera Sans Mono | — | (12%) | — | (8%) | 78.48% | (18%) |
| Bitstream Vera Serif | — | (12%) | — | (9%) | 68.61% | (18%) |
So what?!
This is intended as no more than a rough guide to regarding supposedly safe fonts for website design, presenting a summary of available information drawn from existing internet font surveys. These surveys are not really open to direct comparison, and each one has its own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.
The numbers are anyway interesting, and the poor support for unix among the “standard” fonts is cause for a little more care when constructing font-families that degrade safely across plarforms.
Update
11 February, 2007: The Codestyle survey remains actively available online and the tables above have been updated to reflect its current status. As previously, changes are for the most part small, except with regard to the linux platform where Bitsream fonts continue to show a rise of a few percentage points. Other changes, not yet apparent here, are on Windows as the new fonts for Vista begin to make a showing, currently running at about 20% on the Codestyle Windows Font Survey Results
15 April, 2006: Changes since the original launch of this page are generally small to insignificant, except with regard to the Bitsream fonts under Linux, which show a rise of between 3–4 percentage points in the 5 months since this was originally posted.
The article “Fonts for web design: further comparison of cross-platform dependability” further develops this theme, but extends the examination to 31 of the most common fonts (not just the web-safe ones) from all platforms.
Copyright on information presented here in summarised form remains with the respective originators, as credited above.
