If you have used a word processor or desktop publishing system, you will no doubt be familiar with many different fonts. In principle, a Java applet is capable of displaying any font available on your computer, but when you are designing applets, you should keep in mind that many computers will not have as many fonts installed as you may have. Therefore, it is a good idea to restrict the fonts you use to those that are guaranteed to be present in all Java installations.These are:

Anything smaller than 10 point is usually hard to read and should not be used excessively, although small text has its place for things like superscripts, subscripts, and other labels. It is also important to remember that specifying a particular point size for a font does not guarantee that the text will appear the same size on all computer screens. Even on machines running on the same platform, screens with different resolutions will display applets at different sizes. Viewing an applet on two different platforms (for example, a Windows-based PC and a UNIX workstation) may produce quite different text sizes for the same font size, even relative to other graphics objects (such as lines and rectangles) within the same applet.