Arial Black - Websafe Font?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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