4 ms·
> sans-serif stands for Arial or Helvetica by default Not really, I think it just means "sans serif". On iOS and Android, it will fallback to the default syste
by fireattack 6y ago
> sans-serif stands for Arial or Helvetica by default
Not really, I think it just means "sans serif". On iOS and Android, it will fallback to the default system font fine.
On Windows (and maybe MacOS, but I never use it), it will likely fallback to Arial because that's most of browsers default to [1], which is one layer before the system one.
[1]: https://i.imgur.com/bmVRwg0.png https://i.imgur.com/bmVRwg0.png
However, users can always change this default font in browser setting [1] to whatever they want.
And I think this is a superior approach (just use "sans serif") than typical "system font stack" because
1) Users not necessarily want the same font for system UI and web page. I knew I don't because Segoe UI is too bulky. Anyway, If they do, they can always just set so in their browsers.
2) it's not hard-coded. What if an Android user changed their system front from Roboto to something else? Now whole premise "consistent look and feel" breaks down by having the hard-coded "Roboto" in your website's CSS.
3) The users still get the consistent look across all the websites that use such rule. And even better, they can control what exactly (back to point 1).