20 Feb 2008

Using the Vista Fonts Without Vista

It’s sometimes worth looking beyond the obvious candidates (Verdana, Arial, etc.) when specifying font lists for web pages, and Windows Vista introduced some decent new typefaces that are gradually becoming more widely installed: Calibri, Consolas, Constantia, Candara, Cambria and Corbel.

Those who’ve steered clear of Vista and Office 2007, but want the fonts for testing, can get hold of them legally for free; simply download PowerPoint Viewer 2007. If you run XP within a virtual machine you can create a separate instance to make testing with and without them easier, or use a font management utility that lets you toggle groups of fonts.