Does anyone know what the most commonly used fonts are for the web? and more specifically, perhaps a chart that breaks down which fonts can be found in which major browser and which fonts can not be found?
This is quite useful, and shows which fonts are considered ‘web-safe’:
For sans-serif, you’re best off with Verdana, Arial, and Helvetica.
Serif fonts are best covered by Georgia, Garamond, Times New Roman and Times.
I’m not sure with the others though (not off-hand anyway). Of course be sure to specifiy the generic fail-safes (sans-serif, serif, and so forth) respectively. 
Hey. In CSS for sans-serif i usually use:
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
@Dan: These two fonts are exacty the same but I see many people stick Veranda infront, which is a much bigger font, and the site can therefore display differently on different computers?
i will prefer
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
or
Verdana
I know you’re asking for the most common web font but here’s one of my favourite web fonts.
It looks really good at large size, Nice and Crisp.
“Trebuchet MS”,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
Remember that there is no font that is available on all systems, which is why you should always include a generic font family at the end of the list.
There are some fonts that are common on Windows and Mac systems, but if you include various Linux distros the list shrinks dramatically.
The only font on my old Red Hat distro that can be expected to be found on a Windows or Mac system is Courier, and you really don’t want to use that for an entire web page.
definitely arial!
another this is you can used web2.0 font for the body text, now d days people are accepting it mostly
microsoft made a little program to embed your fonts, the name escapes me, it works quite well but i havent used it in a while, it hasnt been updated since 2005 so i think they kinda gave up on the idea.
personally i think it would be a good thing for your user to not have to have the font you are using and still be able to see it, im not sure if the font can be substituted though so it may have some flaws in terms of accessability.
mac user?
verdana is a good replacement for helvetica, as previously posted, win users dont get helvetica by default.
I got 3 free fonts from linotype with quarkxpress so i might download it in a minute actually
Acually Arial is a good repacement for Helvetica, in fact they are almost exactly the same. Veranda however, is a bigger font
^^ no Arial is a poor imitation of Helvetica that only came about because MS didn’t want to license Helvetica.
It’s not really a good replacement for Helvetica, they have different intended use cases. Helvetica was made for printed materials and signage (that it happens to work well on screen is an unintended effect since computers with fonts weren’t around when the font was created in 1957), Verdana was explicitly designed for on-screen rendering.
Now Helvetica Neue, that is a good Helvetica replacement 
Trebuchet’s a Windows font (the MS in the name should give it away ;)).
i was actually refering to helvetica
webApplication(like gmail , yahoo, zoho) oriented font family “Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif”
webpage oriented font family “Verdana”
MuthuRaja
Zoho