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How to choose a font for a website?

I am not a web designer, but a server-side web application developer. Like a dull sound, suppose I'm blind font ... Maybe I don't know what I need.

When you look at Facebook, its

font-family:"lucida grande",tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif;

stackoverflow

 font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;

gmail

 font-family:arial,sans-serif;

nytimes.com

 font-family:georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;

Wikipedia

 font-family:sans-serif;

How do people come to a decision? Is this a factor in the rest of the page design? Why are there so many variations on these sites? Is there a standard for readability?

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Here on SO:

Otherwise, it is important to say that for the Internet there is only a very limited set of fonts, because in order to make sure that people see what you want them to see, you must choose the font that everyone has in their system.

[edit] Since this answer has been accepted, the accepted answer I believe should improve it.

I recently found a blog post that has a very useful overview of web fonts and various operating systems.

Also, a very good explanation of the anatomy of web fonts .

Cool & new: replacing dynamic text

One really cool new technology for sites where it’s important to implement a custom font, for example. h1 or even h2 sIFR tags. This blog post shows how it is implemented.

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Well, the first and most important decision you have to make is to choose a serif font or sans-serif . In print media, serif is preferable to long texts, but most people prefer sans-serif fonts on a computer. As I was told, serifs are a kind of anchors that you can look at to make it easier to read large serif texts. Sans-serif fonts tend to tire your eyes faster for large texts.

As for the actual font, I think it is more than personal taste.

Most importantly, it is recommended that you use no more than 2 or 3 different fonts for the website. Otherwise, it violates the consistency and simplicity of the site. In this case, less.

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Whatever font you choose, your declaration should end, sans-serif; , Serifs; or, monospace; since they are the only 3 that guarantee the provision of user agents.

Arial, verdana, times, and courier have provided for every commercial browser I have ever used. I know that open source browsers on Linux often do not have verdana.

Georgia, tahoma, etc. - This is a complete game in which I would stay away or have more general backups. I am sure that you know that the browser selects the first font that it can display in the list.

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The Facebook font declaration seems a bit excessive, except that Lucide Grande is usually found on Mac OS and Tahoma on Windows. If you want to play it safely, one font that can be found on most OSs like Arial, Verdana or Times New Roman is fine, followed by a common one (serif, sans serif, monospaced) that tells the browser to choose the right font for rendering if the specified font is not found. A good resource for learning web fonts and CSS in general is w3schools.com - http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp .

In terms of readability, serif fonts have small details at the ends of letter forms, called serifs, which help fill the space between the letters, making it easier for the eye to track the horizontal text. Traditionally, sans-serif fonts were considered easier to read on the screen, but this was due to poor serif rendering by older web browsers. Modern web browsers use OS-level anti-aliasing (anti-aliasing) to more accurately display fonts.

Whatever choice you make, you should use a combination of serif and sans-serif fonts to help establish a strong hierarchy of information on your web page. For example, you can choose a serif font for the title and a sans serif font for your copy of the body.

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