Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Font Issues

Specifying fonts for use on web pages is made difficult by the fact that browsers are limited to displaying fonts that are already installed on the user’s local hard drive. So, even though you’ve specified text to be displayed in the Frutiger font, if users do not have Frutiger installed on their machines, they will see the text in whatever their default browser font happens to be. Fortunately, CSS allows you to specify a list of alternative fonts if your first choice is not found (as discussed in the section "Font Family“).

This problem is compounded by the fact that fonts are named inconsistently across platforms and based on the foundry they come from. So even though you want text to show up in plain Times, the font name for that typeface may be Times New Roman or TimesNR or Times Roman. Browsers don’t know the difference. This makes it difficult to find a font face even if it (or something like it) is in fact there.