On-screen readability is very important for web pages. You can improve the readability of your pages a lot by using fonts designed specifically for use on screen. Most computer fonts are optimized for the printed page, not screen display.
If your computer does not have the following fonts installed, you will not be able to see these examples properly (they will then appear as Courier...if you have that font installed). This is why you normally specify a list of fonts you want to use for a selection (as explained below).
Here is the same line of example text shown in all of the fonts. How is the readability? Georgia is a serif screen font from Microsoft. It is installed automatically when you install Internet Explorer.
Here is the same line of example text shown in all of the fonts. How is the readability? New York is a serif screen font from Apple. It is an ancient font, designed for the first Macs, but it still works well on screen.
Here is the same line of example text shown in all of the fonts. How is the readability? Times (or Times New Roman) is a serif font optimized for printing. It is not optimized for screen use. Compare with the previous two fonts. Many users have Times set as their default browser font.
NOT a
screen
font
Here is the same line of example text shown in all of the fonts. How is the readability? Verdana is a sans-serif screen font from Microsoft. It is installed automatically when you install Internet Explorer.
Here is the same line of example text shown in all of the fonts. How is the readability? Geneva is a sans-serif screen font from Apple. It is an ancient font, designed for the first Macs, but it still works well on screen.
Here is the same line of example text shown in all of the fonts. How is the readability? Helvetica is a sans-serif font optimized for printing. It is not optimized for screen use. Compare with the previous two fonts. This is a particularly good example of a font which is difficult to read on the screen.
NOT a
screen
font
Here is the same line of example text shown in all of the fonts. How is the readability? Courier is a monospaced serif font designed to look like a typewriter font. It is not optimized for screen use, but its wide spacing generally works OK on screen when a monospaced font is needed. It is often the default monospaced font set in a browser.
NOT a
screen
font
How to Specify the Font
You can specify your preferred fonts for text in your HTML document using the FACE attribute of the <FONT> tag. You can specify a list of several choices. If the font listed first is available on the viewers system, it will be used; otherwise, the next font in line will be used. Example:
<FONT face="Georgia,New York,Times"> ... </FONT>
The text enclosed between the <FONT> and </FONT> tags will be displayed using fonts from the list, assuming the viewer has one of those fonts installed.
In GoLive, you can specify "Font Lists" that will apply the desired list of fonts to selected text.