
Outlook on Windows and the Font Stack
Some confusion on my end so wanted to put this out there for fielding.
I've been under the impression that a font stack behaves the way it should in Outlook. So if the first font in a stack is not installed on the users machine the next in line would be the fallback. For example:
font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
In above since the Helvetica fonts are not standard installed Windows fonts next in line would be Arial. Right? Wrong :(
So here are my questions:
Does Outlook kill font stacks if the first font is NOT installed... defaulting to Times New Roman all the time?
If above is yes, why doesn't Litmus virtual environments succeed this? In "Builder"... Outlook 2013... every stack I throw at it behaves normal. And apparently Helevetica is installed on their machines which, if so, would be a very misleading representation of a standard Windows install. Can anyone confirm?
If #1 again is correct, and Litmus is in oopsie mode, would the best course of action be our hosted font hack (IE conditional comments) to force Outlook to not default to TNR?
Thanks all!
Hello Eric ! Two things come to my mind :
Helvetica
toArial
. So you simplify your font stack tofont-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;
and it should have the same effect. You can read more about this here. If you want to try different font stacks and see the applied font on different systems, check out fontfamily.io.Yeah I know the custom font bug, but I figured that applied to hosted fonts only and not generally considered system fonts. I guess I'm wondering at what point does Outlook break the stack. If the first font isn't installed and doesn't "alias" does it break the stack all together?
I have evidence that in Outlook 13
Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
just failed all together and defaulted to Times New Roman.Hi, Eric. With this particular stack, have you tried:
font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;