Which Fonts to use

We get asked quite often which are the best fonts to display a website.

Without a doubt sans-serif fonts, the ones without all the ticks and marks on the corners of all the letters, look much sharper on LCD monitors, and are easier on the eye.

CSS 3.0 supports downloadable fonts via the @font-face variable. which gives much more flexibility at the expense of users having to download your font files first..

Until CSS 3.0 is fully supported by all browsers, websites are safest sticking to the following font families:

Legible Web Fonts

Sans-Serif Fonts
font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,FreeSans,"Liberation Sans","Nimbus Sans L",sans-serif
font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,"DejaVu Sans Condensed",sans-serif

Serif Fonts
font-family: Georgia,"Bitstream Charter","Century Schoolbook L","Liberation Serif",Times,serif
font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,"Nimbus Roman No9 L","FreeSerif","Liberation Serif",serif;

Remember that many fonts have their copyrights owned by the operating system (Microsoft, Apple etc) So we build these long lists of fonts to ensure a viewer will see the site in a close alternative, if they do not have the specified font on their system.

We would recommend going for the Verdana or Arial lists, as they are the only two sans-serif fonts distributed with Windows, Apple and Linux systems.

More information on installed fonts can be found here:
http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-CombinedResults.shtml

For large swathes of text, I personally still prefer a serif font like Times, even on a LCD monitor. I think that is closer to how words look in printed books, and while it may not look as clean and neat, I can read at a much faster rate.