Creating global and site-wide font sets
Many beginning designers go crazy with fonts...they set their text to a font they have and get excited when it appears in their browser. However, they ignore the fact that the majority of the world may not have that font, and that a design so carefully constructed around one font may look radically different when viewed in another.
Common fonts:
There are, nevertheless, certain fonts that have become pseudo-standard on the Web. Here is a list of fonts that your viewers will most likely have:
- Arial [MS]
- Comic Sans [MS]
- Courier New [MS]
- Helvetica
- Times
- Times New Roman [MS]
- Verdana [MS]
Notice the number of Microsoft fonts in this list. That's right, they are probably the ones one the most computers out there, both Windows and Mac. Almost EVERY MS application installs these, so if your viewers have gone anywhere NEAR an MS product in the last couple of years they will have these fonts sitting happily in their System Folder / Directory. If you don't have it yet, you can download this standard font set from Microsoft's Typography Page.
Creating global font sets:
To define global font sets in GoLive [those that will be used by all your sites], first close all your sites and pages. Now choose Edit Font Sets... from the Style > Font menu or press Option-Command-F. This should bring up the Font Set Editor window, as shown below.
Click the New button [shown above] to make a new font set. From the popup menu, choose the font you want to be the FIRST OPTION for your viewers. Then click the New button on the bottom right...select the next font. And so on, until you complete the font set you want.
Use File > New [or hit Command-N] to create a new document. The font set you just created will appear in the Style > Font menu.
Creating site font sets:
If you do not want to define a font set globally but still want it to be available to all the pages in your site, you can define a Site Font Set. Here's how.
In your Site Window, click the Fontsets tab.
Now from the Site > New menu, choose Font Set.
An untitled font set will appear. Name it.
Now it's time to choose the fonts that will be in your set. In the Font Set Inspector, click the existing New Font. From the popup menu, choose the font you want to be the FIRST OPTION for your viewers. Then click the New button on the bottom right...select the next font. And so on, until you complete the font set you want.
Notice that in the example above my last font [sans-serif] was actually a font category. This is your last resort for those users in Tanzania who don't have any of the fonts on your list. It will tell their browser to use the default sans-serif font [user-configurable in most browsers].
The site font set should now be visible in the Style > Font throughout the pages of your site. It appears set apart from the Global Font Sets but a menu divider.
Exercise: Set your browser to override a site's fonts and visit one of the site's you've built. Does the site look ok to user's who don't have the fonts you specified? If it doesn't, you may have to jump some extra hoops to make it work. It never hurts to go the extra mile, and this factor may well be the one who makes it or breaks it for your future customers.
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