Within most online text editors only the same small set of available fonts are found. Why only a small set of these fonts? Because these are the fonts typically installed on your device. Normally referred to as "web safe" fonts.
The set of fonts available on a computer is defined by the fonts that are shipped with the operating system, added by installed applications, and individual fonts added manually over time.
This resulting list of installed fonts can vary greatly from device to device. Fortunately there is a subset of fonts that are almost always found; referred to as "web safe" fonts:
- "safe" because they are available on pretty much every device
- "web" because they are used when editing documents online
In the editor, these fonts can be found at the top of any font selection tool. These fonts are:
- Arial
- Courier
- Georgia
- Helvetica
- Lucida Sans
- Tahoma
- Times New Roman
- Trebuchet MS
- Verdana
With only a small selection of fonts design can be limited . One solution is to expand the set of available fonts by using web fonts.
What are Web Fonts?
Web fonts are available online, from providers like Google fonts. Your device downloads them only when needed (eliminating installation). The word "web" in this case refers to "created for the web, and distributed online".
Web fonts expand text choices and allow for design beyond standard "web safe" fonts.
Because of this, the editor uses font stacks (using cascading style sheets) that automatically tell any email program how to "fall back" to a safe font when that email client is not able to render them. The stacks work as a descendant list of choices: if the first one is not available, it moves to the next.
In the editor, fonts are grouped together to offer the best possible fallback solution. This ensures that the layout won't break when the selected font is not supported. The variables considered when building these font stacks were font shape and font size.
The following is a simplified list of the available font stacks:
Web font › Web safe fallback list of options
Bitter › Georgia › Times › Times New Roman › serif
Droid Serif › Georgia › Times › Times New Roman › serif
Lato › Tahoma › Verdana › Segoe › sans-serif
Open Sans › Helvetica Neue › Helvetica › Arial › sans-serif
Roboto › Tahoma › Verdana › Segoe › sans-serif
Source Sans Pro › Tahoma › Verdana › Segoe › sans-serif
Montserrat › Trebuchet MS › Lucida Grande › Lucida Sans Unicode › Lucida Sans › sans-serif
Ubuntu › Tahoma › Verdana › Segoe › sans-serif
Japanese fonts
Included are two Japanese fonts in the stacks. Hiragino (ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3) is provided with Mac OS, while Meiryo (メイリオ) is distributed with Microsoft latest versions of Windows.
Both stacks are built to cover the most popular configurations:
ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3 › Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro › Osaka › メイリオ › Meiryo › ＭＳ Ｐゴシック › MS PGothic › sans-serif
メイリオ › Meiryo › ＭＳ Ｐゴシック › MS PGothic › ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3 › Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro › Osaka › sans-serif