Stop Using Helvetica on the Web

I’m seeing Helvetica more and more online, especially on sites with design related subject matter. Most people who have Helvetica installed on their system are designers, and most designers use Macs.  Ironically, these are the same people who should understand more than anyone the differences between web and print design, and why web-safe fonts are important.  Helvetica is sexy, but PC browsers just don’t render it well.

This is what Helvetica looks like on Firefox in Windows XP:

As you can see, it’s not pretty.

Use a PC native font – like Arial – first in your font-family declarations.  The difference between Arial and Helvetica, especially at body text size, is negligible. As Always, test your design across as many browsers and operating systems as possible.