font-family

Resumo

A propriedade font-family do CSS permite que se faça uma lista de prioridades de familias de fontes e/ou nomes genéricos de famílias a serem especificados para um elemento selecionado. Ao contrário da maioria das demais propriedades CSS, os valores são separados por vírgula para indicar quais são as alternativas. O Browser irá utilizar a primeira fonte da lista que for encontrada no computador, ou poderá fazer o dowload utilizando a informação contida na regra @font-face.

Programadores WEB devem sempre adicionar pelo menos uma família genérica para a lista de font-family, já que não há garantia que aquela fonte específica está instalada no computador, ou possa ser baixada pela regra @font-face. A família genérica permite o browser selecionar uma fonte aceita pelo computador, quando necessário.

É também conveniente usar de antemão a propriedade font para definir a font-size e outras propriedades relacionadas a fonte todas de uma só vez.

Nota: A propriedade font-family especifica a lista de fontes, da prioridade mais alta para a mais baixa. Font selection does not simply stop at the first font named in the list that is on the user's system. Rather, font selection is done one character at a time, so that if an available font does not have a glyph that can display a character needed, the later available fonts are tried. However, this doesn't work in Internet Explorer 6 or earlier.

When a font is only available in some styles, variants, or sizes, those properties may also influence which font family is chosen.

Initial value	dependsOnUserAgent
Aplica-se a	all elements. It also applies to `::first-letter` and `::first-line`.
Inherited	yes
Midia	visual
Computed value	as specified
Animatable	não
Canonical order	the unique non-ambiguous order defined by the formal grammar

Syntax

Formal syntax: [ <family-name> | <generic-family> ]#where 
<family-name> = <string> | <IDENT>+
<generic-family> = serif | sans-serif | cursive | fantasy | monospace

font-family: Gill Sans Extrabold, sans-serif
font-family: "Goudy Bookletter 1911", sans-serif

font-family: sans-serif
font-family: serif
font-family: fantasy
font-family: cursive
font-family: monospace

font-family: inherit

Values

<family-name> The name of a font family. For example, "Times" and "Helvetica" are font families. Font family names containing whitespace should be quoted.

<generic-name>

Generic font families are a fallback mechanism, a means of preserving some of the style sheet author's intent in case when none of the specified fonts are available. Generic family names are keywords and must not be quoted. A generic font family should be the a last alternative in the list of font family names.

serif: Glyphs have finishing strokes, flared or tapering ends, or have actual serifed endings.
E.g. Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", Palladio, "URW Palladio", serif
sans-serif: Glyphs have stroke endings that are plain.
E.g. 'Trebuchet MS', 'Liberation Sans', 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif
monospace: All glyphs have the same fixed width.
E.g. "DejaVu Sans Mono", Menlo, Consolas, "Liberation Mono", Monaco, "Lucida Console", monospace
cursive: Glyphs in cursive fonts generally have either joining strokes or other cursive characteristics beyond those of italic typefaces. The glyphs are partially or completely connected, and the result looks more like handwritten pen or brush writing than printed letterwork.
fantasy: Fantasy fonts are primarily decorative fonts that contain playful representations of characters.

Valid family names

Font family names must either be given quoted as strings, or unquoted as a sequence of one or more identifiers. This means that punctuation characters and digits at the start of each token must be escaped in unquoted font family names.

For example, the following declarations are valid:

font-family: Gill Sans Extrabold, sans-serif;
font-family: "Goudy Bookletter 1911", sans-serif;

The following declarations are invalid:

font-family: Goudy Bookletter 1911, sans-serif;
font-family: Red/Black, sans-serif;
font-family: "Lucida" Grande, sans-serif;
font-family: Ahem!, sans-serif;
font-family: test@foo, sans-serif;
font-family: #POUND, sans-serif;
font-family: Hawaii 5-0, sans-serif;

Examples

Example 1

body {
  font-family: "Gill Sans Extrabold", Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

.receipt {
  font-family: Courier, "Lucida Console", monospace;
}

Example 2

.exampleserif {
    font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", Georgia, serif;
}

.examplesansserif {
    font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

.examplemonospace {
    font-family: "Lucida Console", Courier, monospace;
}

.examplecursive {
    font-family: cursive;
}

.examplefantasy {
    font-family: fantasy;
}

<div class="exampleserif">
This is an example of a serif font.
</div>

<div class="examplesansserif">
This is an example of a sans-serif font.
</div>

<div class="examplemonospace">
This is an example of a monospace font.
</div>

<div class="examplecursive">
This is an example of a cursive font.
</div>

<div class="examplefantasy">
This is an example of a fantasy font.
</div>

Live Sample

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
CSS Fonts Module Level 3 The definition of 'font-family' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	No significant change
CSS Level 2 (Revision 1) The definition of 'font-family' in that specification.	Recommendation	No significant change
CSS Level 1 The definition of 'font-familiy' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial definition

Feature	Chrome	Firefox (Gecko)	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari
Basic support	1.0	1.0 (1.7 or earlier)	3.0	3.5	1.0

Feature	Android	Firefox Mobile (Gecko)	IE Phone	Opera Mobile	Safari Mobile
Basic support	1.0	1.0 (1)	6.0	6.0	1.0