Which local fonts can I use?

Back in the day (from the 1990s until the arrival font embedding technologies, and the likes of TypeKit and Google Fonts) we had at our disposal a limited subset of fonts we called ‘web safe fonts’. CSS with its font fallback approach meant we could suggest different fonts in order of priority (absolutely revolutionary the proper to this HTML had a font attribute that allowed the specification of a single font).

So we would create font sets of similar fonts across Mac and Windows (honestly the only platforms most web designers/developers focused on)–Helvetica and arial for example, Times and Times New Roman and feel reasonably confident this would cover most users font availability.

But what about now?

Stoyan Stefanov has set out to discover which local fonts are available where for his new High-Performance Web Fonts site.