What Fonts Are Safe For Web Usage?

Have you ever encountered a web page that has a funny font or even some disrupted display of text with numbers and funny characters added? You can be sure nobody does that deliberately. This happens because the fonts used by the designer are different from what a user’s computer has installed. Yes, this happens and happens a lot.

Fonts are the typographical set of characters that are used to write content online or offline. There are hundreds and thousands of fonts available to choose from. But the fonts used for print medium are normally different from what people normally see on web pages. There are two reasons for it. One, web fonts need to be neat and compact because they are meant for fast access of information online. Secondly, as we discussed above web fonts need to be universal fonts that are normally available on every user’s machines.

Using such universally available fonts is the practice of using ‘web safe fonts’. This is basically making sure that the designer’s version of eth web page and a user’s version are the same. Often times, designers use one of those fancy fonts that sizzle out the web page and when the site is loaded and accessed by users those fonts go missing simply the user do not have those fonts installed in his/her machine.

So, it’s best to use fonts, which are normally available in most machines.

More Advantages of Using Web Safe Fonts

Accessibility With Web Fonts

This is a simple no-brainer reason. Accessibility in terms of rendering your web pages to people with different individual abilities and different machines is also affected by using web safe fonts. For example, screen readers used by visually challenged users are only able to handle very basic fonts and designs. Anything fancy and they fumble. So keeping it safe only increases your accessibility in a great way.

Web Page Display Gets Better

There is a term called web page rendering. It tells us about how a web page displays on different user’s machines. It takes into account different screen sizes, operating systems types, machine’s display quality, Internet connection and several other factors that affect a web page’s final display on a user’s machine. A designer has to keep all these in mind while designing the page. Font is one of the simplest and very effective pieces of this jigsaw. Use a wrong font and your content goes awry in most machines.

Increased Readership

All this accessibility and better website rendering talk is geared towards one and one aim only- increasing your website’s readership. If people can’t read your site properly what’s the point of having a site live. It scares people away never to come back. Your whole point as a designer is to make a user-friendly website. That means you keep user’s need in mind right at the de sign phase. You give priorities to what they need rather than using the font that please your artistic craving.

Some of the most commonly used web fonts are: Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif, Georgia, Times New Roman, Tahoma, and Verdana.

Just find your best matching fonts amongst the web safe fonts your site will be good for a wider audience.

Victor Solovey is a junior web designer at one of the best design agency. He already has spent more than an year in learning the tricks of the trade. He has that fresh perspective and creativity that gives her an edge over others. Victor can be contacted to do psd to css conversions quickly.