it’s the same Arial that’s on everyone’s system. Site that spec Helvetica or Neue often end up finding an extended or condensed (depending on what I’ve got activated) and looking absolutely ridiculous. I’m a graphic designer, so I don’t keep every weight of Helvetica or Helvetica Neue activated at all times. I never thought of using Daniel’s suggestion (“helvetica neue”, helvetica, arial, sans-serif ), but I might start doing that now. I’ve always been a bit confused to see it the other way around. On February 20, 2008, 18:27 CET, Rob Schultz said:
#ARIAL FONT WIKI MAC#
I support Daniel’s proposol to use use Helvetica Neue instead. – Linux users won’t have any problems and designers and Mac users will see the more nice font. ? Especially in headlines it’s much better, Arial there turns out to be really ugly.īut some Linux users told me that Helvetica is a bitmap font on their system and so it’s not possible for them to zoom. I do so for years.Īrial is an ugly copy and I’m always glad if a website uses Helvetica. On February 20, 2008, 18:16 CET, Bernhard said:įully agree with you, Jens.
Otherwise, stick with the sans that was designed for the screen - Verdana. If you are designing a site where your primary audience is going to be designers - aka people who might actually have Helvetica on their machine - then go for it. And I can almost guarantee that the ~1300 people who visit our site a day do not have it on their machines. I work for a government agency that has 150 computers on site, and I can only name one that might have Helvetica on it. Verdana was built from the ground up for screen reading, so why not make it the default font for websites?Ģ. I believe that helvetica neue comes with adobe products and so is reasonably widely avaliable. “helvetica neue”, helvetica, arial, sans-serif On February 20, 2008, 11:06 CET, danielsherson said:
If you have questions or suggestions about what I write, please leave a comment (if available) or a message. Here on I share some of my views and experiences.
Other than that, I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. I’ve worked as a technical lead for Google, I’m close to the W3C and the WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly. I’m Jens Oliver Meiert, and I’m an engineering manager and author. Tweet this? (If it changed your life, you delight me with a coffee.) About Me Helvetica never gets applied when named after Arial. arial, sans-serif, that is, without any reference to Helvetica. However, when you’re in doubt about Helvetica’s abilities, and when you then consider that Arial is pretty much available on every system (according to neat font stats), just refer to arial.
#ARIAL FONT WIKI MAC OS#
My own tests on both Mac OS and Windows XP didn’t reveal any problems (font file on Windows, for what it’s worth: “Helvetic.TTF”) except that with larger font sizes, there “sometimes” is a little problem with glyph presentation even with ClearType activated. Your feedback suggested me to set up another test page. This even works when your favorite font is yet another one, as in 'trebuchet ms', helvetica, arial, sans-serif. On systems with Helvetica installed you’ll get the famous Swiss Grotesque type, and otherwise have a reliable fallback. Since there is and never was, thanks to CSS’s font handling, a need to favor Arial, it’s time to fix an almost historical mistake: Switch to helvetica, arial. Skipping the history of Arial- Wikipedia explains and Mark Simonson colors it-I just like to conclude a brief analysis of a few decorator, designer, and typographer websites: When naming Arial within CSS font preferences first, almost everyone gives it precedence over the equally often listed Helvetica, even though that cannot be desired (and is pointless, because Arial would always be pulled instead).