'Helvetica Neue' and Helvetica font [closed]

Question

I have seen a few of the the websites using font family:

font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif

I remember reading in some older question here on stackoverflow that the Helvetica font is not free, and it is available on Mac only, is it so? I'm using windows XP and I can see that Font being rendered is 'Helvetica Neue', and I don't remember installing any font by myself. so all I wanted to ask is if it is safe to use the above font family? (eg. will most of the windows computers render those fonts? )

Thanks.

Answer 1

Helvetica comes free with mac but not with windows. You will have to buy it. But if you have installed Adobe products it will be installed with many other fonts that come packed with Adobe.

'Helvetica Neue' is the newer version and has slight modification than the older one with correction of few problems that occurred with helvetica.

Answer 2

If you want to use any font in your website you can use this:

 @font-face {
font-family: 'Helvetica Neue';
src: url('Helvetica-Neue-webfont.eot');
src: url('Helvetica-Neue-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
     url('Helvetica-Neue-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
     url('Helvetica-Neue-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
     url('Helvetica-Neue-webfont.svg#Helvetica Neue') format('svg');

  }

To use any paid fonts, you should buy the font and put it in your folder. Use this site to create all types of formats: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/

Answer 3

Helvetica Neue is not free with Windows. However, if you install Adobe software it will install an altered version which can cause problems.

Answer 4

All windows computers will render that font, if the font is introduced with @font-face in the CSS. With @font-face fonts can be used anywhere on the web page, even if the font isn't installed on the user's computer.

Answer 5

Helvetica Neue has been blacklisted from @font-face generators like fontsquirrel.

I think the font stack that is quoted in the first post is the best approach.