Cross browser Fonts

Question

I hate that Lucida Grande is not usable on Internet Explorer. Why is that? And is Calibri a font that can be used on IE?

Answer 1

If you're on a Macintosh, a lot of fonts are installed by default, including Lucida Grande. Windows doesn't install the same range as fonts as Mac OS X, so fonts like Lucida Grande are likely to be missing.

Calibri should be installed on Windows computers with Office >=2007 or 2003 with 2007 compatibility, and likewise for Mac with Office >=2008 or compatibility tools. You probably shouldn't rely on it however.

The Wikipedia page for web typography has some information on what fonts should be available to use on most computers, and how to degrade gracefully if a font isn't present.

Answer 2

different browsers simply support different font renderings. there can be a multitude of reasons why but its not even worth pondering about, the fact is that this is just the case. Anyway the best defense against this is to define a font-family in css so that you have a fallback plan in case your first desired font is not available. aside from that you can also follow this little trick here if you want to force browsers to use a custom font, but just make sure you have rights to use the font before anything.