Re:Stop Using Arial and Helvetica (2013)
by Freak_NL on Monday January 30, 2017 @05:56AM
(#13520058)
> Arial and Helvetica are good readable fonts which always exist on every platform […]
This used to be the case, but it is no longer so. The Microsoft Core Fonts are not necessarily present on each OS (except for Windows of course), although on GNU/Linux and Android (IOS as well I guess?) you often do get a set of comparable replacements that are automatically substituted. Helvetica is always present on Apple devices, but it is certainly not present on each common OS.
There are no fonts that are guaranteed to be present everywhere (and this is fine).
In HTML/CSS (and many other GUI APIs) you can always rely on getting a serif, sans-serif, or monospaced font when you use their corresponding reserved family names, and with @font-face you can load whatever you want (providing you use a font that can be redistributed by you that way). So if you want all users to see text on your website in Comic Sans Neue, then that is (trivially) possible.
This used to be the case, but it is no longer so. The Microsoft Core Fonts are not necessarily present on each OS (except for Windows of course), although on GNU/Linux and Android (IOS as well I guess?) you often do get a set of comparable replacements that are automatically substituted. Helvetica is always present on Apple devices, but it is certainly not present on each common OS.
There are no fonts that are guaranteed to be present everywhere (and this is fine).
In HTML/CSS (and many other GUI APIs) you can always rely on getting a serif, sans-serif, or monospaced font when you use their corresponding reserved family names, and with @font-face you can load whatever you want (providing you use a font that can be redistributed by you that way). So if you want all users to see text on your website in Comic Sans Neue, then that is (trivially) possible.