Helvetica Neue' and Helvetica Font

Helvetica Neue' and Helvetica font

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.

CSS Font Helvetica Neue

This font is not standard on all devices. It is installed by default on some Macs, but rarely on PCs and mobile devices.

To use this font on all devices, use a @font-face declaration in your CSS to link to it on your domain if you wish to use it.

@font-face { font-family: Delicious; src: url('Delicious-Roman.otf'); } 
@font-face { font-family: Delicious; font-weight: bold; src: url('Delicious-Bold.otf'); }

Taken from css3.info

Using Helvetica Neue in a Website

They are taking a 'shotgun' approach to referencing the font. The browser will attempt to match each font name with any installed fonts on the user's machine (in the order they have been listed).

In your example "HelveticaNeue-Light" will be tried first, if this font variant is unavailable the browser will try "Helvetica Neue Light" and finally "Helvetica Neue".

As far as I'm aware "Helvetica Neue" isn't considered a 'web safe font', which means you won't be able to rely on it being installed for your entire user base. It is quite common to define "serif" or "sans-serif" as a final default position.

In order to use fonts which aren't 'web safe' you'll need to use a technique known as font embedding. Embedded fonts do not need to be installed on a user's computer, instead they are downloaded as part of the page. Be aware this increases the overall payload (just like an image does) and can have an impact on page load times.

A great resource for free fonts with open-source licenses is Google Fonts. (You should still check individual licenses before using them.) Each font has a download link with instructions on how to embed them in your website.

How to set Helvetica font?

If you want all browsers to use Arial whenever Helvetica is not available, you can always specify Arial as a second choice font.

body
{
    font-family: 'Helvetica', 'Arial', sans-serif;
    color: #444444;
    font-size: 9pt;
    background-color: #FAFAFA;
}

because font-family can use any number or arguments, and it will use the first one in the list that is available.

Why is the rendered font on my website Arial when I have set font-family: 'Helvetica', 'Helvetica Neue', 'Arial', sans-serif;

Because your system doesn't actually have Helvetica, so you get the next choice on the list.

Setting the font-family doesn't give the user those fonts, it's a suggestion to the client as to which font to use and then suggestions on which to use if the first choice isn't available.

Windows computers aren't likely to have Helvetica on them, but they will have Arial. Conversely, Macs will have Helvetica, but not Arial. This is why the generic family of sans-serif exists. It tells the system to use whatever the system default sans-serif font is, which on your system is Arial.

Using 'font-weight: lighter' or 'font-weight: 100' reliably across email clients

Helvetica Neue is not a web-safe font so what you're seeing in most email clients is Helvetica. To use Helvetica Neue, you'll need to use @import or link to create a link in the <head> to make it work in email. You'll also need to link to a webfont.

Even with the webfont, Helvetica Neue will not work in Gmail or Outlook. Gmail does not support webfonts and Outlook seems to ignore fonts with a space in the name.

You've discovered the issue with using Helvetica as a backup font for Helvetica Neue which is the fonts have different dimensions, so you will get a different look when you view the email in two different clients, like Apple Mail and Gmail.

If you use Font-weight: 100; the lightest weight Neue is not going to look the same as Helvetica. If that variation does not affect the layout of your email then use Helvetica as your fallback. Otherwise try another websafe font that might better match your needs. As an example, Lucida Grande, Trebuchet MS might be a better fallback font.

For more information, check out this links:

The Ultimate Guide to Web Fonts

https://litmus.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-web-fonts

Other helpful resources:

https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/f/font-weight/
https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/neue-helvetica/webfont_preview.html
https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_websafe_fonts.asp
https://websitesetup.org/web-safe-fonts-html-css/

Good luck.

How do I use Helvetica in Java?

I realize that this isn't actually answering the question, but...

On Windows, Helvetica isn't always installed. My machine at work (the one I'm using now) doesn't, despite having Microsoft Office XP.

Helvetica Neue' and Helvetica Font