Generic font families are a fallback mechanism, a means of preserving some of the style sheet author's intent in the worst case when none of the specified fonts can be selected. Here is the explanation from the CSS Specification (Note: 'user agent' means browser): Generic Font Families are defined in the CSS Specification as a last resort method. Note: If a font is more than one word, you must surround it with quotation marks. 4th Choice: If none of the previous fonts are available, a default sans serif font is used.3rd Choice: Arial is the third choice and is installed on most machines.2nd Choice: The second choice is Helvetica Neue, which may be installed on Windows machines.1st Choice: The first choice is Helvetica which is on all Macs, but not many Windows computers.The font-family property allows us to specify several fonts we might like to use. Even if the user doesn't have our first choice font, they have some font that we chose. This allows us to be sure that we have some control over what font is displayed in our website. choose any number of other fonts that we might want to fallback on.choose the font we want if the first one isn't available.When specifying fonts for web pages, we use a system of 'fallbacks', called a font stack. What happens if we ask for a font that the user doesn't have?Ī different font is used instead (usually chosen by the browser).Īs graphic designers, we always want to have control of the font being rendered. We can usually rely on these fonts as well. Other common fonts are also installed with Microsoft Office. We can rely on the fonts from these operating systems being available. Linux (many varieties, but very low market share).There are three major categories of operating systems (listed in order of popularity): Most people rely on fonts that come with their operating system or software. Many people don't even know what a typeface is.In the labs we have over 2,500 fonts to choose from.

Font family helvetica neue