[thelist] Arial Narrow

[Francois Jordaan]

> Anyone know if arial narrow is a standard web-font on
> both Mac & PC??

You should be able to answer your question at these places:

1.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/default.asp
...according to which it's distributed with
Access 2000, Access 97 SR2, Baseball 2000, Encarta Virtual Globe 99, Excel
2000, Expedia Streets and Trips 2000, FrontPage 2000, Greetings 99, Home
Publishing 99, MapPoint 2000, Office 2000 Premium, Office 4.3 Professional,
Office 97 Small Business Edition SR2, Office 97 SR1a, Outlook 2000,
PhotoDraw 2000, PowerPoint 2000, Publisher 2000, Publisher 97, Publisher 98,
TrueType Font Pack, Word 2000, Works 4.5a

That of course applies for both Mac and PC.

2.
http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/
It lists common fonts on Windows, Mac and Unix platforms, and includes
survey results (continuously ongoing) of whether fonts are installed on your
computer or not.
http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-CombinedResults.shtml
...gives Arial Narrow on PC a 81.03% install base. But there are several
caveats (on the site) to this figure.

So I'd say you're quite safe specifying Arial Narrow, but make sure you're
not absolutely dependent on it for visual effect and that you specify
alternative fonts in your CSS.

I made similar decisions regarding whether it's safe to use News Gothic and
Arial Black. News Gothic no, as it's not shipped with newer MS products (XP
and 2000), but Arial Black yes.

francois

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