Trib gave a good overview of the alternative fonts and how to group them:
quote:Basically, I always try to follow these rules ...
the first is your own preference if the browser can find it
the second is a standard font of the same type, typically found on the majority of boxes
the third is the generic family, just in case there's nothing else.
A list of the core fonts supplied by Micro$oft can be found at this location and a very simple explanation of font families can be found here.
My advice ... stick to
for newspaper type characters - Derivatives of times roman, garamond etc. and end your list with serif
for modern (like on this forum) - Derivatives of verdana, arial, helvetica, and end your list with sans-serif
for non-proportional spacing - Derivatives of courier, terminal etc. and end your list with monospace
code:
these are non-proportional or monospace characters
in fact, if you don't really care which family member (i.e. which SPECIFIC font) your browsers use - beyond making sure they fit in with a general theme - you can just use the family generic names serif or sans-serif or monospace and let the browser at the other end determine which actual font it uses, it will work.
I'd also recommend using a Mac alternative (e.g. sans-serif: Helevtica) before the generic font-family (as given in the first example at the top of this page.
