Quote Originally Posted by mtbbrian
I will stick with one font...
Brian, there is no single simple discussion or rule when it comes to fonts on a web site.

There are (at least) three distinct font situations and solutions, and what you decide to use will depend on your skill as a graphic designer, the content of your site and the image you're trying to get across to your viewers, and of course, the sophistication and graphic-saviness (hmmm, is that a word?) of your target audience.

At it's most basic, the "keep-it-simple" advice you've gotten so far is sound, but it's also the most boring and limiting, design-wise. That's the tradeoff, and if it's acceptable to you, you can rest assured your site will pretty much look a certain way consistenly in most all web browsers with very little work on your part.

To do this, stay within the handful of default web fonts standard in most browsers, and stick to no more than one or two seperate fonts on your site. Think Yahoo's home page... :Yawn:

A creative step up above that is to embed fonts in your HTML. I have no experience at this, but do know that you code a page (or site) to load a font file to a viewer's browser when they first view the site (the file size is roughly the same as an image file, and so does not affect loading times). When your page calls for a less conventional font to be displayed, the file is now (temporarily) on the viewer's browser and so creates the text with that font.

Granted, this is a far from perfect method, and viewers can disable the font file loading or otherwise configure their browser so it may not work correctly, so it's a crapshoot for the masses. But it does allow you to be more creative with your web text fonts with many viewers...

Finally, any decorative or creative font use above and beyond the most simple and basic requires (as already mentioned) incorporating the font into a web graphic that loads in your viewer's browser like any photo image file.

IMO, for anything more than standard paragraph text, this is the way to go. There is no other way to create exciting type design and incorporate it perfectly into web graphic art.

For this type of use, there are NO rules. Well, certainly not a single font rule, at least. If you want a perfect example (with all modesty aside), look at my web site...

My splash page contains at least six seperate type fonts, and my lobby (home) page eight! But (hopefully) I now what I'm doing, and instead of clashing, they blend and add style to the design... :thumbsup:

Now, if this isn't one's cup of tea, that's fine and all are entitled to thier opinions, but my experience has been the more educated and experienced at graphics and art my viewer's are, the more they like and appreciate it.

And, as they are my target audience, I know I'm doing the right thing...