Blackberry Font-Family

Question

I am currently making a mobile version of our application and I am trying to find a resource that lists out what fonts the Blackberry devices support. I search around on the Blackberry development site and forums but have not had much luck.

So far, any font I specify using CSS does not appear to be working, so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

If you can't find a list of supported font names, you can simply specify font-families. These are the font-families used in WCSS (WAP CSS):

• serif
  examples: Times New Roman
• sans-serif
  examples: Arial, Helvetica
• monospace
  examples: Courier
• cursive
  examples: Zapf-Chancery, Caflisch Script
• fantasy
  examples: Western, Critter

Content Design Guidelines from RIM:
Best Practices: Using fonts effectively in your web content

• Modify fonts judiciously. Use the user-defined default font for the BlackBerry® Browser where possible, unless you have a specific need to select a different font. Although using the user-defined default font makes it more difficult to control layout and appearance, it avoids issues of choosing a font face or font size that the user finds hard to read. Users will either change the default BlackBerry Browser font to a suitable font face or and font size, or accept the theme-specified default font.
• Avoid absolute font sizes where possible. If you change the font size, use relative sizes, such as larger, smaller, xx-large, and so on. In standard text flows, such as a series of paragraphs, changing the font size is unnecessary, since text will wrap. Keep in mind that the user can specify the smallest font size for the BlackBerry Browser, so relative or absolute font sizes that are less than the specified smallest font size will produce no effect on a user's device.

Some resources you might be interested in:

• Documentation for Developers (Blackberry Browser) - Includes CSS guide.
• Browser Specification (flash presentation)
• WCSS Tutorial
• User-Agent Profiles of all Blackberry Devices - Shows supported mime-types, character sets, screen size, Java support, etc.