A Browser Can Only Display Fonts Installed on the User’s Computer

You might have 3.2 billion fonts gathered from a stack of magazine cover discs
and downloaded from the Internet, but if those looking at your web pages don’t
have the same fonts installed on their computer then the computer simply won’t
be able to apply them. You need to be careful which fonts you specify. There are
certain “safe” fonts that most users will have on their computers—they will
probably have Arial or Helvetica but you’re probably pushing it if you count on
Slug Invader Hieroglyphics or Curly Gothic Roman Dings Bold Condensed 5. If you really want to use a relatively obscure font, you can use the comma-
separated
value to specify the very specific font on the off chance that a user
will have it but providing a backup by specifying safer fonts for the browser to
fall back on. It is probably a good idea to test the web pages in the backup fonts
in situations like this, though...
body { font-family: “Slug Invader Hieroglyphics”, arial, helvetica,
sans-serif }




There are a number of fallbacks going on here to achieve a semi-common
font. Most Windows PCs are armed with the Century Gothic font, and most Macs
have the similar Avant Garde installed. So with something along the lines of h1, h2
{ font-family: “Century Gothic”, “Avant Garde” }, the headings get a little bit of
special treatment compared to the rest of the text (which is set by body { fontfamily:
Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif }).