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Is Arial Black web safe?

I have read it is but when I put it in my font declaration, I am being given Times New Roman back.

Does anyone know why?

Lauraducky
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PI.
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  • I think it's available only on Windows. If you want to use it everywhere you can embed it as web font (@font-face). Here is a generator http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator – jcubic Mar 02 '12 at 08:26
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    Does the licensing allow for the font to be embedded? – PI. Mar 02 '12 at 08:28
  • as @17bc17 write you need to know that. If license don't allow that you can find some free font that look similar and then embed it instead. – jcubic Mar 02 '12 at 08:33
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    Can you show us your, font delclaration? – Starx Mar 02 '12 at 08:34

5 Answers5

22

According to Code Style Font Survey (actually the best estimate you can have) Arial Black is commonly installed on about 97% of Windows and Mac computers and 68% of Linux machines. So, it's fairly safe to use it, but you got to provide substitutes for it in your font stack. Something like:

.my-style { font-family: 'Arial Black', 'Arial Bold', Gadget, sans-serif;

If you wish it to appear, even when it's not really installed on your (or any user) system, then you'll have to embed the font file by using @font-face directive in your CSS.

Here's Code Style Survey: http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-CombinedResultsFull.shtml

Luis Paulo Lohmann
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    The link appears to be dead, is the answer still valid today? How about ios / Android devices? – Luciano Feb 19 '16 at 14:21
  • @Luciano http://www.cssfontstack.com/ has info in Windows and Mac. Best I can find for mobile is this massive table http://blog.typekit.com/2013/04/17/fallback-fonts-on-mobile-devices/ but it doesn't include Android browsers, only iOS and Android system fonts – user56reinstatemonica8 Apr 01 '16 at 16:12
10

I dont know how you declared your font. Normally, it should not happen the way you are saying it did.

Make sure you are declaring the font in this way

font-family: 'Arial Black', Gadget, sans-serif;

Here are some other common patterns on web safe fonts, for you to choose from.

font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Arial Black', Gadget, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;
font-family: 'Comic Sans MS', cursive;
font-family: Courier, monospace;
font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-family: Garamond, serif;
font-family: Georgia, serif;
font-family: Impact, Charcoal, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Lucida Console', Monaco, monospace;
font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif;
font-family: 'MS Sans Serif', Geneva, sans-serif;
font-family: 'MS Serif', 'New York', sans-serif;
font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;
font-family: Symbol, sans-serif;
font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;
font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
font-family: Webdings, sans-serif;
font-family: Wingdings, 'Zapf Dingbats', sans-serif;

Source

Starx
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    "This page provided to the domain owner free by Sedo's Domain Parking" Seems like domain was bought by someone. Is there another list somewhere? – Quamis Jul 20 '15 at 09:13
5

No, it is no longer supported by Firefox (bug).

See http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/796630

Or https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644385

Some hacks have been proposed here to make it work: Is there a trick to show Arial Black in Firefox?

Community
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KrisWebDev
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2

Set your font-weight to 900, followed by your font-family

{font-weight: 900; font-family: 'Arial Black', 'Arial Bold', Gadget, sans-serif;}

Works great for me.

RonB
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0

It is web-safe, yes.

Have you tried using speech marks?

'Arial Black'

Christy Herron
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  • Yes ... still nothing ... silly question but could it be because the font is not installed on my computer? – PI. Mar 02 '12 at 08:27
  • That would be one reason yes! It should be on your system however, unless it has been deleted. If you use this kind of syntax; body{font-family:"Arial Black", "Times New Roman", serif} then the second (in this case "Times New Roman") will be used if the first font isn't available. – Christy Herron Mar 02 '12 at 08:29
  • Arial Black should be on Windows and Mac systems, it might not be standard on other platforms – Christy Herron Mar 02 '12 at 08:32