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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T23:20:59+00:00

As I’m working through an SL3/SL4 application, and starting to work with fonts, I’m

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As I’m working through an SL3/SL4 application, and starting to work with fonts, I’m finding a lack of documentation and best practices on font strategies. For example:

  1. Are there common fallback fonts for
    the supported font set (Arial, Comic
    Sans MS, etc.)? Is there a set of recommendations on fallback fonts between Windows and Macintosh systems?
  2. Are there Silverlight-supported
    fonts that will (almost always) be
    on an end-user system, or like 99.5%
    of the time, like “Times New Roman”
    or “Verdana”, including Macintosh?
    Are there any sites that list this
    kind of information?
  3. Are there recommendations for
    accounting for Moonlight (Linux)
    views of SL apps and the fonts that
    are/aren’t deployed with Linux
    systems?
  4. Is there a way to determine, in XAML
    or code-behind, if an end-user has a
    supported font on their system? I’d
    like this to run upon entry and then
    change the XAML as a result of
    findings to support the right font
    or allow an embedded one to load.
  5. In the documentation for supported
    fonts, it lists a bunch of fonts
    that “Silverlight text elements can
    use the following Latin fonts if
    available on the local computer    .”.
    Does this mean that if I use a font
    that is not in this list, such as
    “Cooper Black”, and an end-user
    does have this font on their system, they will still need to
    download the font as embedded in my
    application?

Any links or pointers that can lead to at least some of the questions above answered would be very appreciated.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Ok, here we go. These should get you closer to where you want to be:

    1. This is the same as CSS – you’ll need to account for ‘font stacks’. This is one of the best pages I’ve seen on the subject: Guide to CSS Font Stacks: Techniques and Resources
    2. This link is from November 2007 but it still has a great listing: Complete Guide to Pre-Installed Fonts in Linux, Mac, and Windows
    3. The link in #2 is the same – it covers Linux.
    4. Not sure about this one. Sorry 🙁
    5. I believe that is correct, Silverlight only looks for fonts on the end user system that it will natively support. Otherwise, it will need to download the font.
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