is 'bookman old style' web safe

Question

Is 'Bookman Old Style' web safe? If not, is there something that looks similar which is web safer?

Solution 1

It's not a safe choice: Bookman Old Style is bundled with MS Office. That means it's on a lot of machines, but far from 100% coverage. None of my machines, for example, has it.

I would check out services like FontSquirrel or Google Web Fonts for a free, usable font that can be embedded into your site, and comes close to Bookman.

Solution 2

Bookman Old Style is not a web safe typeface, but you can specify the following CSS font stack to get an 'old style serif' face on many platforms, with plain serif fallbacks:

body{  
    font-family: "Calisto MT", "Bookman Old Style", Bookman, "Goudy Old Style", Garamond, "Hoefler Text", "Bitstream Charter", Georgia, serif;
}

Solution 3

You should re-read the most authoritative page as it includes Bookman..

Other options that usually work cross-platform are:

• Palatino
• Garamond
• Bookman
• Avant Garde

and a bit down the page continues with

Bookman
Bookman, also called Bookman Old Style. Not shipped with WinXP. Shipped with MS Office 2000.

Solution 4

If you must have Bookman, it's available under Typekit's Personal plan, which is currently just $25/year. Otherwise, there's nothing stopping you from specifying it in your font stacks; you'll have to decide the likelihood of your audience haaving Office installed, etc. and whether that's worth it. Just make sure you provide a fallback to something more reliable like Georgia.

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Comments

[40XUserNotFound]

For the longest time, the list of web safe fonts that I used was this site's, and it doesn't list bookman. But ultimately I'm not sure how accurate it is (hasn't been updated in 3 years), so I don't have a good answer for you.

[40XUserNotFound]

Have you considered using JavaScript deployed fonts such as those from Typekit?

[Admin]

No, it is definitely not web safe. You might get broader coverage with Garamond, but it isn't universally available, either.

[Su']

Did you forget to link whatever that authoritative page is?

[Nick]

+1 Here's Bookman on Typekit.

[pixel]

@Su' Original question before being migrated contained a link (named by the OP as the most authoritative page according to google on web fonts..). to web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/fonts.html and noted that it does not contain the bookman old style..