Is There A Way To Check What Fonts Are Installed On Machines Via The Web?

Is there a way to test what fonts are installed or maybe a way I can read out all of them? I want to do a survey in our product to see what fonts I can use on our projects.

Solution 1:

There is a script that renders a bunch of DIVs in different fonts, then checks to see if the resulting DIV has the right dimensions for the given font.

http://www.lalit.org/lab/javascript-css-font-detect

Solution 2:

It is possible, so long as Flash is available. See http://www.maratz.com/blog/archives/2006/08/18/detect-visitors-fonts-with-flash/

Solution 3:

Checkout the jQuery plug-in FontUnstack, from this question.

Solution 4:

Here's a list of the most common fonts on windows and mac machines (with image comparisons of each one). I use it when selecting which fonts to use on a project.

Solution 5:

There is no foolproof way of determining installed (and usable) fonts on a client machine through the browser.

Flash may allow you to do this, or possibly some crazy (but fun to write) JavaScript that makes assumptions about the size of elements with a given font - but this script may be susceptible to differences in client settings no matter how many cases it considers.

I would strongly recommend against the survey / deployment approach that you are proposing. You will have some impossible decisions to make - for example what percentage availability is acceptable? If it's 100%, what do you do when a new user comes along that doesn't have this font? If it's not, what proportion of your users are you comfortable with having a degraded experience?

Have you considered sIFR or simply an image element with appropriate alt attribute?

If you have specific typographic requirements, it may be worth keeping an eye on this: http://blog.typekit.com/.