Arial Narrow usage on a website - good choice for default?

Question

I am using Arial Narrow as the default in a lot of website I create, but just wanted to know if it's reasonable to believe that the vast majority of users have that font in their system.

One of the main reasons I ask is because in one site I have a menu that would mess up if any other font than one as condensed as Arial Narrow was used:

http://www.greencastleparish.com

Cheers,

Niall

Answer 1

Hi Niall,

Not about the font but about the website you gave a link to... a suggestion.

First off, the site as a whole looks really nice but the flash animation of the buildings runs too quickly.  I timed the animation and found it takes about 10 seconds to run through.  Each transition takes about 1 second.  That leaves 6 seconds of actual viewing time to divide between the 4 pictures, working out to 1 1/2 seconds each.  You're just starting to actually look at the picture and it's disappearing.

May I suggest slowing the transitions down to take at least twice as long and the pictures be shown for a minimum of 3 seconds between transitions?  Or if you want to keep the transition times the same, perhaps show the buildings for 5 seconds?  I believe 5 seconds is considered optimum for viewing what is essentially a slide show - time enough for people to have a reasonable viewing time without losing their attention by showing it for too long.

I put together a screen saver made up of photos of the family and tried different times for display of each picture, and 5 seconds does seem to be the preferred time.

Answer 2

It has only been a standard font with Windows since Vista, and Mac since OS X. However almost everyone with a decent word processor will have this (e.g. Office 97 or newer).

Since a small minority of people with older computers and word processors will likely see this rendered as Arial or Helvetica, you may want to at least test it using Arial to see if it still looks readable. You may want to do the menu in normal Arial using a smaller font size, while keeping the rest of the site in Arial Narrow so the menu will show correctly for everyone. Or consider using images for the menu items. That way they will show up correctly for everyone and you can still use Arial Narrow.

If you decide to use another font which is more widely supported, check some of the references I have listed below for standard fonts.

Depending on the level of support you want to give for older computers, you may be quite limited. For example, Windows 95 only had about 8 default font families. Arial or Times New Roman are really the only fonts that everyone will see (almost) the same.

Hope this helps!