My pages should be legible with any browser. For best results, use a browser that supports XHTML and CSS style sheets. I recommend Firefox, which does an excellent job of rendering my pages visually.
If your browser doesn’t support style sheets, you’ll see my pages without background images, in your browser’s default colors.
If these free fonts are installed on your system, my style sheets may use them.
Microsoft distributes excellent hinted fonts designed for high screen readability. (If you’ve installed Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher, you should already have these.) Verdana and Georgia are much better default fonts for a Web browser than Arial/Helvetica and Times New Roman/Times. My webpages often fall back on these.
Microsoft distributes OpenType-encoded updates to these TrueType fonts as an update to Publisher 2000/2002. Download the Publisher 2002/2000 Update: Euro Enabled Fonts
update from the Microsoft Office Web site. Many archive programs can extract TrueType files from the executable. This package also contains many other fonts:
You can also download More Euro Enabled Fonts for Microsoft Office 2000
for older OpenType-encoded updates:
Microsoft supplies these ClearType fonts with their free Microsoft Reader 2.0.
Lucida Sans Unicode comes bundled with Microsoft Windows 98 or higher. The next best thing is Lucida Grande. Iceman ported it and several other Macintosh OSX fonts to Windows TrueType format. Both are excellent screen fonts which support many Unicode characters that more common screen fonts lack.
Bitstream has allowed Will Harris to distribute Geometric Slab Serif 703, their version of Memphis/Rockwell.
My page of pet pictures uses this display font for the title.
The Chronology of Quendor uses their Futhark font to simulate Beyond Zork runes.
To view the MathML entity test page of my HTML 4.0 Compliance Test, you may need a font with good Unicode coverage. If you don’t mind installing multimebibyte TrueType fonts, one of these may serve.
Windows 98 or higher users should install Lucida Sans Unicode. Microsoft Office users may also wish to install Helvetica Bastardized UnicodeArial Unicode MS.
Cyberbit is based on Times (well, technically on Dutch 801 BT, Bitstream’s version of Times). It has a much wider range of 29934 glyphs including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters. Though Bitstream no longer distributes it free from their Web site, you can still download it from several places.
Code2000 is a colossal Unicode font supporting 62981 glyphs in dozens of blocks, with properly encoded combining characters. It includes many characters rarely supported elsewhere and even supports a few constructed language scripts like Tengwar and Klingon.
Its hand-lettered typescript reminds me of lettering by Edward Gorey or the font from the game Nine. Affectations like a wide serifed crossbar on the capital J make it too eccentric for general use. Could be nice in a Halloween theme. If you don’t mind installing a 7 Mebibyte TrueType font, check it out. Shareware, but worth $5.
Everson Mono Unicode is an emaciated monospace font which remains legible at tiny point sizes. Though its range of 4899 glyphs seems modest compared to the preceding heavyweights, that’s still over twice Lucida Sans Unicode’s range. Worth a try if you need a monospace font for editing your Unicode web pages.
If I write more articles about the D’ni language from Riven, I’ll probably write sample texts in Jehon’s D’ni Script LM font.
When I designed my spring
site layout, I dreamed of a typeface like Fontdinerdotcom, a lemon-scented font which to me evokes formica and bowling alleys. Thank you, Font Diner, for making my fontasy come true.
Many wonderful fonts based on old phototypesetting and comic books. Fine additions to any type library.
Looking for freeware and shareware fonts? The Open Directory’s font foundries and freeware and shareware fonts categories are a good place to start. I’ll just single out a few for comment.
Lots of original TrueType fonts, most with a full Latin-1 character set, and several with PostScript versions. Little Trouble Girl is nifty. Would be nice if they produced single TrueType files with both code pages instead of separate Windows and Mac versions, though.
Alphabetician Chank Diesel used to crank out fonts as fast as Sergio Aragones draws cartoons. Now he mostly spotlights original fonts from outside contributors.
Sketchy hand-drawn fonts by Tom Murphy. If you liked Times New Random, you may also like Tom’s New Roman, an earlier font with similar inspiration.
Two fine fonts for download. Spaceage Round is a groovy retro-futuristic font that reminds me of Space Channel 5.