Help! I am just designing a new website and have used a mixture of fonts: Gill Sans Light and Verdana. The coders have said it will all have to go in graphic boxes because many computer users will not have the ability to see Gill Sans Light. This means that the entire Home Page is in graphic boxes and won't be picked up by the web crawlers. Any suggestions??

That's correct.For a font to show in a visitors web browser the font must be installed on their system. Verdana is a pretty safe bet but Gill Sans Light is more unpredictable.

There are a few things you can do...

1. Use generic fonts - useful info Reliability of Web safe fonts

2. Instead of using images for heading text use text styled with CSS (obviously your logo and stuff would still be images). This will ensure that headings can get crawled by SE's.

3. Use the Gill font but make sure that the font users see when they haven't got it installed fits correctly.

THanks very much.

As long as you don't overdo it you can use sIFR to display custom fonts: Mike Davidson -- sIFR 2.0: Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses

clock you can always use fonts like Gils Sans Light if you want just make sure you offer other alternatives for anyone who doesn't have that font installed. In css:

font family: "Gils Sans Light, Verdana, Arial"

something like that. Those people who do have the font installed will see it, but those who don't can still see another font of you're choosing.

It's best though to just use a basic font like verdana that you know just about everyone is going to have installed for your main content. If you really do want to make sure a page heading is in a different font for everyone it really does need to be an image.

It's probably best to use generic fonts for most things and then style them a little with css. sIFR is another option. I've never used it myself, but have looked at the site and it's always looked like a decent option.

Thanks vangogh. I will have a rethink on the design. Bit annoying considering I paid a web- designer in the first place who never mentioned that some people will not be able to see his design...

Also, what happens to the sizing? Gill sans light has to be used in a much bigger size that Verdana, does css automatically resize to fit?

I have just looked at the sIFR link that Brendan22 left and it looks interesting. I'll let you know how I get on!

Font have their own size though many will have a similar default size. It will depend a little on how the font size was specified in the code as to what size the new font you choose will display. If something absolute was specified in css like:

font-size: 12px

then the new font will display at the same 12px. If a relative measurement was used like % or em in the css or if the font was coded in html has a size between 1 and 7 then the new font will resize itself based on the default size of the font.

Chances are it won't be a big change even if a relavant size was specified. There will be some change, but the odds are the new font will be of similar size to the current one. But there might be some change.

Has anybody here even heard of Font Styling with CSS?

You can actually import fonts into your website, so long as you provide the font file on your webserver and call it through a css function.

Comon guys broaden your horizons, go check it out and "A List Apart".com

If you would bothered to look, you would see that this thread was started 2 YEARS AGO. And currently the only browsers that actually support font embedding is Safari.

So maybe if you actually checked your facts you might not get off on the wrong foot!!!

Verdana is the best font on the web followed by arial and times new roman. Dont use proprietary fonts because the browser will only use a few basic fonts.

I alternate between Bell MT and Book Antiqua, I just like the legibility.