HTML and CSS Standards

Windows Typefaces

Things get really weird here. While you expect Macs to have different typefaces from Windows, you would expect Windows to retain all the old ones and to add more over time. Not so. Windows XP does not deploy the same typefaces as Windows 98 does.

WinXP does not have the following typefaces that appeared on Win98: Brush Script MT, Calisto MT, Century Schoolbook (a choice of mine), Desdemona, Georgia Ref (it has Georgia), Letter Gothic MT, Lucida Handwriting (an excellent choice for cursive), Matisse ITC, Matura MT Script Capitals, MS Linedraw, News Gothic MT, OCR A Extended, Tempus Sans ITC. (I may have installed one or two of those under Win98, but certainly not all.)

The default and serif are Times New Roman in both MSIE and Gecko. Arial is the sans-serif and Comic Sans MS is cursive in both. MSIE has no fantasy typeface assigned and Courier New is the monospace. I can't identify Gecko fantasy and monospace typefaces. Neither Courier nor Script is TrueType. Script doesn't exist under Win98, and Gecko can't find it, Symbol, or Webdings under WinXP.

Opera adds its own wrinkles with WinXP by not having a cursive typeface and using Terminal for its fantasy typeface. Its default and serif are Times New Roman and its sans-serif is Verdana. It uses Courier for monospace. It does find Script but can't find Symbol or Webdings.

Unlike most typefaces Verdana and Georgia were designed for computer display. Thus these are my first choices, especially since both exist on Windows and Macintosh.

default	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
serif	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
sans-serif	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
cursive	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
fantasy	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
monospace	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Arial	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Arial Black	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Book Antiqua	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Brush Script MT	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Calisto MT	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Century Gothic	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Century Schoolbook	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Comic Sans MS	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Courier	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Courier New	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Desdemona	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Garamond	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Georgia	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Georgia Ref	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Impact	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Letter Gothic MT	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Lucida Handwriting	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Lucida Sans	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Lucida Sans Unicode	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Matisse ITC	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Matura MT Script Capitals	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
MS Linedraw	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
News Gothic MT	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
OCR A Extended	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Palatino Linotype	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Script	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Symbol	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Tempus Sans ITC	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Times New Roman	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Trebuchet MS	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Verdana	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Webdings	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.