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Greg Posted…

I know with Windows XP all the fonts are already included and I believe any new installation of Internet Explorer comes with the set of fonts. Maybe Microsoft feels everyone and their uncle already has the fonts and if not, then just download, or buy a Microsoft product.

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Nate Posted…

Greg, you’re right–these fonts are everywhere and I’m not sure there is even a reason why anyone would download them–but it still seems weird that they went to the trouble to close down the download area, seems like that would require more of a motivation. hmmm.

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Nate Posted…

In case you are wondering which microsoft products install which of the core fonts, you can check on the Fonts supplied with some Microsoft products page.

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francois Posted…

I’d say the most likely explanation is that that Microsoft Typography section is due for a revamp. It’s become progressively quainter as it aged — remember this, for example? http://www.microsoft.com/typography/css/gallery/ — very un-Microsoft and personal in style. I always liked that about it, but accept that change was inevitable.

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francois Posted…

I’d say the most likely explanation is that that Microsoft Typography section is due for a revamp. It’s become progressively quainter as it aged — remember this, for example? http://www.microsoft.com/typography/css/gallery/ — very un-Microsoft and personal in style. I always liked that about it, but accept that change was inevitable.

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francois Posted…

Sorry, clicked the Post button twice by accident. Thanks for the reminder about the “Fonts supplied with MS products”, Nate. I’ve recently been trying to determine how ubiquitous the News Gothic MT font is, as I’m planning to spec it for a website. It seems that nearly all Windows PCs will have it. And strangely, on most PCs IE displays News Gothic MT when “font-family:sans-serif” is specified, e.g. here.

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Nate Posted…

In the most recent issue of wired (sept. 2002) I was reading last night about the use of a “Richter Scale” for measuring the one millitary battle against another. It seems that a richter scale for font ubiquity might also work well. Rating fonts based on the number of applications which install it, the popularity of those applications, etc. The major hurdle would be getting the data, the microsoft list gets us only halfway there.

It’s interesting to hear about News Gothic MT’s popularity, I wonder — does anyone know of a tool which will reveal the font used on a webpage? In other words, do I have to eyeball compair the font to determine if css specified “san-serif” on mac ie is also News Gothic MT?

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michael Posted…

There are still plenty of older machines that don’t have those fonts installed, but perhaps that’s the whole point, since Microsoft wants to force everyone to upgrade to their newest OS and/or browser.

Interestingly, I have been thinking a lot about this lately. It is my contention that Microsoft has not gone far enough with the typography initiative. The addition of Georgia, Verdana and others is wonderful and has completely changed the web (and other media as well–Matthew Carter is the bomb), but why not provide us with even more screen-readable typefaces? The fact that in the 21st century web developers are still stuck with basically two or three typefaces for body text strikes me as more than a little ludicrous.

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francois Posted…

I agree entirely, Michael. It would be great if we had more widely-distributed typefaces designed for the screen. It’s not exactly Microsoft’s responsibility, except for the fact that they are probably the only company, with the ubiquity of their software, who are capable of making fonts sufficiently ubiquitous for designers to specify with confidence. No other way exists of getting fonts onto enough users’ machines. The best Microsoft can do is to keep commissioning good font designs to give away with their products. I hope they do.

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Nate Posted…

typographica has the answer, they actually asked microsoft (via zeldman). If you want to grab the files, I made another post to this weblog with the ftp address for grabbing them (quick before they are removed).