How can I determine what font a browser is actually using to render some text?

Question

My css specifies "font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;" for the whole page. It looks like Verdana is being used instead on some parts. I would like to be able to verify this.

I've tried copying and pasting from my browser into Word, but it's not preserving the font.

Is there some way to determine which font is actually being used for a section of text?

Firebug will give me the list of fonts as above[1], but I don't see a way to determine which one of the fonts is being used.

1. It turns out the wrong list was being used, which solved my original Verdana problem. But I'm still curious if there's a way to identify the actual rendering font.

Answer 1

You could try checking that specific section with Firebug for Firefox. It should give you all the exact properties.

Answer 2

You can write out a piece of text in a known font and size, and determine the width of the DIV using JavaScript. If the DIV comes out to a different width, you know the font is not right.

Answer 3

The FontFinder plugin for Firefox does exactly what you want. After installing, highlight a block of text, right click and go to FontFinder -> Analyze Selection. It will tell you the actual font being used as well as a other information like font-family, spacing, color, etc.