Web pages looking bad in Linux? Install msttcorefonts. - Adventures in Switching to Linux

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Web pages looking bad in Linux? Install msttcorefonts.

I'm doing a little work on a website at the moment but the menu looks terrible in Linux. On Windows it is nice and fits on one line. On Linux the menu breaks to a second line and looks TERRIBLE!

Before Microsoft's TrueType core fonts

The reason for this is I am using 'Trebuchet MS' as the font in my style sheet. Since Ubuntu Linux does not have that font installed, it goes with my backup of sans-serif. The best way to fix this is to install the package msttcorefonts. That will install a number of MS fonts including: Andale Mono, Arial Black, Arial, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet, Verdana and Webdings

After Microsoft's TrueType core fonts
If you are designing a web page you can, and should, pick another backup font too because you can't expect most people running Linux to have these fonts installed. In my case, I went with Helvetica as the backup and then sans-serif as the final failsafe. That at least keeps my menu on 1 line.

And for a much more in depth read on all the fonts and what looks like what on Linux, check out this great article: Linux Font Equivalents to Popular Web Typefaces

1 comment:

Rob Britton said...

My God, it's amazing! Now I don't have to view link bars on two lines. Thanks!