Newbie with a few questions

[Cygnus]

I'm using Xara Web Designer 6 and getting started on some thumbnails for my astronomy club website. The designs are coming along well enough, but I just thought of a couple of things that may be a problem down the road. This is my first trek into web design in over two year, so I have a questions of more seasoned designers at this forum.

First, for one of my designs I'm using DicotLight font, but I just realized that this font isn't web safe. Does this mean that I should just use a font that is web safe, or can I go ahead and use DicotLight, anyway? I'd hate to drop DicotLight because it works so well with the overall design.

Second, I'm concerned that my page isn't going fit all browsers. How will I know that my page will work with all browsers?

[Boy]

It's better to only use web-safe fonts because otherwise your text design will only be seen by those who have installed the same font(s) on their computer. Of course you can use DicotLight and have it be seen by all visitors to your website if you export the text as a bitmap. Biggest disadvantage, though, is that search engines won't be able to parse your text.

As to your second question, WD6 websites can be shown in all main browsers but if you add additional code sometimes problems may occur in some browsers. If you want to be sure of compatibility download all browsers and check.

[ODdOnLifeItself]

For large tracts of text I would definitely try to stick to the websafe ones...

For logos, headers, etc.; I use whatever I think looks best. (ie. any font) Do remember to group or otherwise bitmap render the non-websafe fonts.

James

[gwpriester]

To address Boy's comment about search engine visibility, you can always add an Alt tag in the Website Properties > Image section. You can add a descriptive Alt tag to just about anything and it does help search engines identify useful content.