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You don’t need thousands of fonts to create a great-looking website. But you do need to make sure that the fonts you use are visible to everyone who visits your website. And that’s where web safe fonts come in. ’t need to be hosted anywhere else for your visitors to see them, it’d be a homerun for you. That’s exactly what this post has been written for: we’ll cover the 31 best-looking web safe fonts and show you exactly how to implement them into your WordPress site. Use the links on the side to navigate to the section that interests you the most, or jump directly to our list of web safe fonts. What Fonts are Web Safe? Including variations, there are over 650,000 different fonts available online. Fonts that are supported by the majority of web browsers and operating systems are considered to be web safe. The operating system automatically includes the font files, so visitors don’t have to download fonts from your servers.
An example is the ubiquitous Arial font that birthed thousands of “spin-offs”. Are Web Safe Fonts Necessary? Sure, the vast majority of users now use Google Chrome, both on mobile and desktop. But that doesn’t mean web safe fonts are a thing of the past. In fact, supported fonts vary based on the operating systems, including the current version a user has. So if you design a website with a font only supported by the newest version of Windows 10, most users will see something else. In addition, if you choose to use and host a custom local font, or font hosted by a third party, it can slow down your website. So, switching to web safe fonts can speed up your website. And that’s a great thing. Because nearly 70% of consumers say page speed influences their purchasing decisions. Are Google Fonts Web Safe? Google Fonts aren’t inherently supported by your operating system, so by definition, they aren’t web safe fonts.
Rather, since Google, a third-party, hosts them, a Google Font is called a web font. Confusing, we know, but the difference is that your browser needs to load a file before it can show Google fonts. Web safe fonts already have font files ready on the majority of devices. But, don’t worry about the lack of the word safe. Google Fonts are completely safe to use to enhance the design of your website. But, the extra HTTP requests to an outside server could slow down your page loading speed. We’ve compiled a list of over thirty different great-looking web safe fonts you can use to design your website. Let’s jump right into it. Arial is a classic sans serif font, suitable for both paragraphs and headlines. It’s long been a staple in web design. Although in recent years, it’s often used as a fallback in a font stack, rather than as the main font-family.
Font-family: Arial, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif. Baskerville is a relatively thick serif font, originally developed as a typeface by John Baskerville in 1750. The design is well-balanced, using a mix of thick and thin strokes to soften the hard edges of a typical serif typeface. It’s well supported by newer Apple and Microsoft OS versions. Font-family: Baskerville, Baskerville Old Face, Garamond, Times New Roman, serif. Bodoni MT is a serif font, like Times New Roman, more suitable for paragraph text than headlines for most websites. Bodoni MT is available by default with Microsoft 10 and some older versions. Bodoni 72 is included with macOS Sierra and newer versions. Font-family: Bodoni MT, Bodoni 72, Didot, Didot LT STD, Hoefler Text, Garamond, Times New Roman, serif. Calibri is Microsoft’s standard sans serif font and has been since its release with Microsoft Office 2007. It has a soft, modern look, with rounded edges to elevate the typical sans serif feel, making it more warm than robotic.
Font-family: Calibri, Candara, Segoe, Segoe UI, Optima, Arial, sans-serif. Calisto MT is a serif font with slightly softer and less pronounced serifs than most similar typefaces. It’s a standard Microsoft font, included with most newer versions of Windows. The macOS or iOS equivalent is the Bookman Old Style font. Font-family: Calisto MT, Bookman Old Style, Bookman, Goudy Old Style, Garamond, Hoefler Text, Bitstream Charter, Georgia, serif. Cambria is an even softer serif font, with, in many cases, barely noticeable serifs even for capital letters. This gives it a more modern feel and also maintains a high level of readability on screens. Font-family: Cambria, Georgia, serif. Candara is a sans serif font. It’s part of Microsoft’s ClearType font collection. The macOS and iOS equivalent is Optima Regular. The uneven stroke weights make it feel a bit less modern and corporate than other sans serif fonts. Font-family: Candara, Calibri, Segoe, Segoe UI, Optima, Arial, sans-serif. Century Gothic is a geometric sans serif font, with a very clean and balanced look.
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