Web font usage stats

[Si_Daniels]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Anyone know of any research that lists the most commonly specified Web fonts. I can guess most of these, but it would be nice to have this broken out by style (bold and itlaic) and not just family.

Cheers, Si

[Simon Robertson]

i'm interested in this too.

[Si_Daniels]

So far have drawn a blank on this. I did some eye-balling of the top 20 US sites (according to this http://www.alexa.com/topsites) and they mostly seem to use Arial, Arial Bold and Tahoma and Tahoma Bold. But I'm sure this isn't representative of the wider web.

[Nick Shinn]

Never figured you for a lister, Si.

[Si_Daniels]

I'm not a lister! Background: Some internet-browsing devices don't have enough memory for all the fonts we ship in full OS's so I'm looking to provide a prioritized list based in part in actual usage.

[boardman]

Si, I'm not sure that this is what you need, but Code Style has a pretty complete (and ongoing) survey of Web fonts - in fact, it's the best around. Their recent (April 11, 2009) Full Windows font survey results are fascinating, if not incredible: Franklin Gothic Medium is on 97.62% of surveyed Windows machines? Gill Sans MT is on about half of all surveyed Windows machines?

[Si_Daniels]

Thanks, yes I'm familiar with that one. However it doesn't seem to relate to the popularity of fonts specified on Web pages.

Re. Franklin Gothic Medium - that is a core UI font in Windows XP, that stuck around. Gill Sans however most likely got installed with Office.

Cheers, Si