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Suppose I embedded the font files for Arial , Georgia and other commonly available font files on any system on my website too using @font-face... would this result in a clash of the font files and the subsequent FOUT issues? Or is it that the browser loads the @font-face for a family only when it does not receive the font families in the client system?

Bhumi Singhal
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If you use a @font-face rule containing the declaration font-family: Arial, then you will hide a font named Arial installed in the user’s system. CSS3 Fonts, clause 4.2 says: “If the font family name is the same as a font family available in a given user's environment, it effectively hides the underlying font for documents that use the stylesheet. This permits a web author to freely choose font-family names without worrying about conflicts with font family names present in a given user's environment.”

This does not depend on the actual font you are embedding, just on the name you are giving to it in @font-face. (Embedding the real Arial would probably constitute a copyright infringement, by the way.)

Jukka K. Korpela
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  • A copyright infringement?? Why so ? Aint Arial , Georgia, Terbuchet and Courier New very general fonts which are freely available – Bhumi Singhal Jan 30 '13 at 09:32
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    Fonts are software protected by copyright, and you are thereby limited to doing what the copyright holder allows you to do. See e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1805324/how-to-use-web-fonts-legally – Jukka K. Korpela Jan 30 '13 at 11:24
  • @JukkaK.Korpela While I agree with your comment, I'm requesting that you delete it. The reason is that the link to that question is blocking the effort to [burninate the "legal" tag](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/295117/this-tag-should-not-be-legal). If you leave me a comment when you've done that, I'll come back and clean up this comment... then you can delete the response. (Add a new text-only comment if you wish, since the advice is good.) Thanks! – Mogsdad Aug 11 '15 at 15:09