1. Understanding Web-Safe Fonts For HTML and CSS
Selection of the right fonts is important to make attractive and appealing websites. While custom fonts offer countless possibilities, they can occasionally lead to inconsistencies across different devices and browsers. Web-safe fonts, supported in both CSS and HTML, are widely compatible across a multitude of platforms and devices, ensuring a seamless user experience. In this tutorial, we will dissect the ins and outs of web-safe fonts in CSS and HTML, and also we will provide a list of all the web-safe fonts that are generally available in all browsers.
1.1. What are Web Safe Fonts?
Most devices have pre-installed fonts known as web-safe fonts and are reliably supported across different operating systems and web browsers. These fonts are a safe choice for web designers as they ensure consistent typography across various platforms, minimizing the risk of font fallbacks or rendering issues. To highlight the unique identity of your brand, web-safe fonts in CSS and HTML play a key role.
2. What are Different Types of Web-Safe Fonts in CSS?
When it comes to the classification of web-safe fonts in CSS, we can generally split them into five(5) main types. These five types of web-safe font stacks are listed below:
- Sans-serif
- Serif
- Monospaced
- Fantasy
- Cursive
3. Sans-serif Fonts
The Sans-serif web-safe fonts lack the decorative lines at the ends of characters, offering a clean and modern look, ideal for digital interfaces and web content due to their readability on screens.
Arial
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| Font Name | Example |
| Arial | Try |
| Arial Black | Try |
| Arial Narrow | Try |
| Arial Rounded MT Bold | Try |
| Avant Garde | Try |
| Calibri | Try |
| Candara | Try |
| Century Gothic | Try |
| Franklin Gothic Medium | Try |
| Futura | Try |
| Geneva | Try |
| Gill Sans | Try |
| Helvetica | Try |
| Impact | Try |
| Lucida Grande | Try |
| Optima | Try |
| Segoe UI | Try |
| Tahoma | Try |
| Trebuchet MS | Try |
| Verdana | Try |
4. Serif Fonts
Serif web-safe fonts feature small lines or embellishments at the ends of characters, giving them a traditional and formal appearance, commonly used for printed materials like books and newspapers.
Baskerville
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| Font Name | Example |
| Baskerville | Try |
| Big Caslon | Try |
| Bodoni MT | Try |
| Book Antiqua | Try |
| Calisto MT | Try |
| Cambria | Try |
| Didot | Try |
| Garamond | Try |
| Georgia | Try |
| Goudy Old Style | Try |
| Hoefler Text | Try |
| Lucida Bright | Try |
| Palatino | Try |
| Perpetua | Try |
| Rockwell | Try |
| Rockwell Extra Bold | Try |
| Times New Roman | Try |
5. Monospaced Fonts
As the name suggests, the Monospaced web-safe fonts allocate the same horizontal space for each character, making them useful for coding and text-based applications where alignment and clarity are noticeable.
Andale Mono
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| Font Name | Example |
| Andale Mono | Try |
| Consolas | Try |
| Courier New | Try |
| Lucida Console | Try |
| Lucida Sans Typewriter | Try |
| Monaco | Try |
6. Fantasy Fonts
The Fantasy web safe fonts are imaginative and decorative, often featuring elaborate designs and artistic elements, suitable for creative projects, invitations, and titles to evoke a whimsical or mystical atmosphere.
Copperplate
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| Font Name | Example |
| Copperplate | Try |
| Papyrus | Try |
7. Cursive Fonts
Cursive web-safe fonts mimic handwriting styles, with fluid strokes and varying thickness, adding a personal touch to designs and conveying elegance, making them popular for invitations, logos, and branding materials.
Brush Script MT
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| Font Name | Example |
| Brush Script MT | Try |
| Comic Sans | Try |
8. Final Thoughts on Web Safe Fonts
In conclusion, web-safe fonts are crucial in ensuring consistent typography and empower you to design websites that look great and perform well on any device or platform. Incorporate these web-safe fonts into your CSS and HTML markup with confidence, and enjoy the benefits of consistent typography across the web.
- Do check Google fonts as they have around 1500+ fonts stack and most of them are safe i.e. supported by almost all of the browsers.
- We collected resources from the CSS font stack to write up this comprehensive and updated blog tutorial.
- The Official source of CSS language w3org also contains a helpful resurce of web safe fonts.