Fonts on the web
By Oli
At 2:20 PM · Thursday, 18 December · 2003
To Design
I came across an interesting report on installed fonts from Visibone, a company that makes web design tools and aids. The survey results are really interesting, but flawed in several areas:
- There’s no tie-in to browser version or operating system level for surveyed computers (or screen size/depth, browser size etc)
- There’s no list of base fonts for various browsers (ie Opera on Win2000 has these fonts by default)
- The results seem quite skewed — mainly English-speaking web designers are taking the survey
The issue of installed fonts has been bugging me for a while. It mainly became a concern because I have no idea what fonts are installed on Japanese computers — Japanese web pages seldom specify fonts, and often use images for title text. I’m thinking to make a list of base installed fonts and default browsers for major OS releases, both Japanese and American.
In the meantime here are some other font resources for web design:
- Microsoft Typography
Microsoft has provided a lot of information, including
- Fonts supplied with Microsoft software & OSes, including (incomplete) Unix and Apple OS default font information
A Disagreeably Facetious Type Glossary
(for those “beginning a love affair with fonts”)- Font links and news, and not just Microsoft-related
- Plus lots of other information, including character design standards for creating digital fonts.
- Apple
In Internet Developer on Fonts Apple has provided a lot of good basic information, including a Web Font Gallery displaying 4 typefaces at multiple sizes in 8 browsers using 3 methods of font sizing. Unfortunately it’s flawed by not including IE 6 (duh!). They also have basic introductions to cross-platform issues, and using
emorpx.They also have font creation and developer resources in Apple Developer Connection; Fonts
- EKI; The Institute of the Estonian Language
- EKI has a great Letter database allowing you to search for letters in unicode, including by using natural language called “Search in Unicode character names” (eg “u with macron”).
- Alan Wood’s Unicode font resources
- This is a list of unicode fonts for Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix. It includes information about what unicode ranges each font supports, OS unicode support, and font availability.
- Web Page Design for Designers; Typography
- This is a great (slightly dated) write-up of web typography issues, aimed at print designers. Just make sure you ignore their HTML advice!
- And as an interesting aside, Underware’s TypeWorkshop
- They have documented classes on type organised by Underware. These are very informative if you’re thinking of designing a typeface. Unfortunately they haven’t made a web or pixel font yet
Also of note for Mac OS X users is Steve Hartwell’s Font Inspector, a very impressive-looking freeware font analysis tool.
I’ll try to add some better resources to this list. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment!
Discussion...
- 1. Comment by Rudolf · 19 Dec, 2003 · 4:38 PM
Two or three months ago, the Engl. Dept. bought a couple of boxes with the Japanese version of Windows XP installed. For what it may be worth, here’s the complete Fonts directory. I don’t think anyone has added or removed any fonts, so this should be fairly representative.
Maybe a screengrab of what this directory looks like in the Win file browser would be more useful, though.
- 2. Comment by Rudolf · 19 Dec, 2003 · 4:41 PM
Oops, botched the link.
