I am a back-end developer but I am developing a website for a friend, so sorry if this question is stupid.
My friend sent me the layout he wishes and now I am trying to glue everything together with HTML. There are some fonts he used that are not the "standard" ones.
Looking in the net, I found this article which explains how to do that: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssatten
But I've also found people saying that non-standard fonts in a website are a bad idea because some browsers may not support it.
Can someone with Web development clarify to me if it is really a bad idea? Thanks!
No. Even if the included font (be it through @font-face, stylesheet rel, JS etc.) fails to be downloaded/included when the CSS is interpreted and the page is rendered, the fallback will be applied. The fallback, being a web safe font (like Arial) means text will still be displayed.
For example:
* {
font-family: "Included Special Font", "Arial", sans-serif;
/* ^ Primary ^ Fallback 1 ^ Fallback 2 */
}
Here is a list of web safe fonts for your reference.