From my memory there were versions of OSX that had Helvetica but not Helvetica Neue. Hence `"Helvetica Neue", "Helvetica"` will pick the best Helvetica available for the computer.
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Jared Zimmerman <jared.zimmerman@wikimedia.org> wrote:
We have an action item to change the order from the free fonts that are visually similar to the specified non-free fonts, I don't think* that this will change the experience for user without those fonts but we'd have to do some testing, it really comes down to if we specify Helvetica Neue, and a particular system thinks that should match a different free font than the one we thought was a best match.
Just to confirm: I did a quick test, and it appears that on OSX (10.9) Chrome and Firefox interpret font family settings the same using the order Tim suggested. So the output is still Georgia headings and Helvetica Neue body.
One question... it seems like specifying Helvetica regular and Neue is slightly redundant. Is there are reason we don't cut Helvetica regular from the list?
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]