
Revised Font Stack - chaostheory
http://www.awayback.com/revised-font-stack/
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decklin
I might be daft, but this article doesn't explain (and seems to assume it's
perfectly obvious) why in the world you should use

    
    
        Arial, sans-serif
    

instead of:

    
    
        sans-serif
    

at the bottom of a stack. If I am on a platform where Arial looks OK, it
should already be my default sans-serif font, right? Currently, I have Arial
installed, but I've set my default sans-serif font to DejaVu Sans Mono, which
(subjectively) looks better on freetype. But most sites force Arial. It seems
like a cargo-cult sort of thing.

This problem is worse with monospace fonts (even more subjectively, I am
practically allergic to Courier New).

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jacobolus
You should stick Arial at the bottom if your first-choice font is something
similar in x-height and design sensibility, because it will make your site
stay more consistent in design. If your first-choice font is a completely
unrelated sans-serif, then there's no reason to put Arial at the end.

Thus, you’ll notice that in this particular article, Arial is at the end of
the “Helvetica” stack, but _not_ at the end of the “Gill Sans” stack.

Also, DejaVu Sans Mono is never going to keep design continuity with the
site’s intended sans-serif font, because it’s monospace.

~~~
decklin
Erm, sorry, I just meant DejaVu Sans. But I do appreciate that its metrics are
still different from Arial. Is that important in every application? Maybe.

~~~
jacobolus
Well, I think a lot of times you’re right, the “Arial” at the end is just
cargo-cultism, and should be scrapped; blame copy-pasta.

But yes, I think it’s completely reasonable to have a design request Helvetica
but fall back on Arial: to the regular reader the two look pretty much the
same, which means that the design will stay working, both in layout and style,
as the designer intended.

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samdk
Thanks for this! I've used 'Better CSS Font Stacks' as my primary reference
for a while. It's nice to have another, and it's extremely nice to be able to
see some numbers about font presence on OS X/Windows.

(Better CSS Font Stacks: [http://unitinteractive.com/blog/2008/06/26/better-
css-font-s...](http://unitinteractive.com/blog/2008/06/26/better-css-font-
stacks/) \-- the PDF they link to at the end is highly recommended.)

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pbhjpbhj
If you're bothered enough to do this sort of analysis on the display font
wouldn't you choose an @font-face font?

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jacobolus
There’s nothing stopping you from putting one of those first, right? Either
way, you should be careful about the fallbacks.

It’s impossible for an article like this to discuss the proper stack for every
possible @font-face typeface you could choose.

