Best Browser Fonts

The best upgrade you can do for any computer is to replace the ugly font it (most likely) is currently using as your browser's default font with a font that is designed for superior on-screen legibility. Windows and Linux machine generally come through with horrible ugly fonts installed as the default browser font. Happily, Microsoft has commissioned several excellent fonts designed for video screen use and made them available for free download.

Recent versions of Windows have some (or all) of these fonts already installed. If you don't already have them, Windows and Macintosh users can download a free copy of these fonts from here.

Linux users can obtain the Microsoft Web fonts from here. (Red Hat 6.x RPM format.) Mandrake 7.x users who dual boot with a Windows machine can use DrakFont to install their existing Windows fonts. Linux web browser are really improved when you install Verdana and use it as the default proportional font. You can also experiment with configuring your (X)windows manager to use Verdana as a system font (for dialog boxes and menus and such.)

Windows 9X users should check out Microsoft's free Font Properties Extension.

How to change your default Browser font

• First, you need to check to see if the fonts need installing in Windows. Here is how to install fonts in Windows 9X.
• Internet Explorer
  • Select Tools/Internet Options/General and click on the Fonts button.

    
    

    Select the font you want for Web Page Font (i.e., Georgia) This is the font that the browser uses for proportional spaced text (unless the web page overrides this.) The Plain Text Font must be monospaced and is used to simulate typewriter output. It also might be used for email.

    After you have chosen the fonts you want, then click on OK. Click on Refresh to see the effects of your change.

• Netscape Communicator 4.x
  • Select Edit/Preferences/Appearance/Fonts

    
    

    Select the font you want for Variable Width Font (i.e., Georgia) This is the font that the browser uses for proportional spaced text (unless the web page overrides this.) The Fixed Width Font must be monospaced and is used to simulate typewriter output. It also might be used for email.

    After you have chosen the fonts you want, then click on OK. Click on Reload to see the effects of your change.

• Note that if the font you want to select (i.e., Georgia) doesn't show up in the font selection dialog box, this means that it must be installed. See above.

• KDE Konqueror (Linux KDE2)
  • Select Settings/Configure/Browsers/Appearance

    
    

    Select the font you want for Standard Font (i.e., Verdana) This is the font that the browser uses for proportional spaced text (unless the web page overrides this.) The Fixed Font must be monospaced and is used to simulate typewriter output. Set the other fonts as you choose.

    After you have chosen the fonts you want, then click on Apply, then on OK. Click on the reload button to see the effects of your change.

    Note that KDE Konqueror is much better in this regard than either Internet Explorer or Netscape, because it lets you choose more default fonts for different clases of formatting. Point goes to Linux and KDE. IMO, KDE Konqurer displays web pages much better than Netscape does. If you are running KDE2, then give Konqueror a try.

Resources for Web Page Developers

• Microsoft Typography Home Page. But take this page with a grain of salt if you are primarily a web page developer. The Microsoft Typography page is oriented towards commercial software developers who are creating programs to sell and develop font technologies to include in the products. There is probably more information here than you need to worry about.
  • Microsoft Fonts and Products. Lists all the fonts that Microsoft distributes with their products (Windows 98, Internet Explorer, etc.) so you can take a calculated gamble about which fonts are likely to be installed on a user's computer, so that you can specify them in your web page. Hint. The latest browser use statistics shows Internet Explorer with 85% of the market....
  • Microsoft reference material on Specifying fonts in Web pages.

• Cascading Style Sheets Home Page. Includes all kinds of tutorials and reference material on how to use CSS style sheets.
• Quick start:
  • First create a style sheet. You can start with the style sheet that this page is using right now. File/Save as with some name that has .css as an extension. Say, default.css.
  • Go through and change the font specifications to how you want your page to look. Refer to the CSS docs, above, if you have any questions.
  • Then add a line like this in your HTML in the <head> section:
    <link rel=stylesheet type="text/css" href="default.css">
    Make sure to add this line before the </head> tag.
  • You should see the style sheet formatting when viewing your page with a browser that is supports CSS style sheets (IE 3-6, Netscape 4-6, KDE Konqueror, etc.) But you should always check your pages with a browser that doesn't support style sheets (Netscape 3.0) to see how they display.

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