Fonts are difficult on the web, because not everyone has the same fonts available. Because of this, browsers have a clever method of finding a font to suit, if given a hint. But what you see is typically not what others see, because the browser chooses from whatever fonts are available on the machine it's running on, and won't look elsewhere.

It's sort of like the story of the man who lost his keys, and was looking under a streetlamp to find them.

A man was on his knees, crawling around under a streetlamp, obviously looking for something, cursing loudly all the while.

A passer-by saw that he was having trouble, and asked if he could help.

The man said, "Can't you see I've lost my keys?"

The passer-by asked, reasonably, "Might you have lost them somewhere else?"

The man replied, "Well, of course I did, you silly fool! I lost them in that dark alley over there."

The passer-by asked, "Why are you looking here, then?"

The man answered, "The light's much better over here."

Instead of using a single font name for your font, use what's called a "stack," which is an ordered list of fonts in a likely order of availability, always followed by the default of that family, which will be filled by what's available on your particular system. Be aware though, that Microsoft foolishly believes that the incredibly ugly "Comic Sans" is a cursive font, and in fact the best of all possible cursive fonts, so makes it the default cursive font, and will blissfully trash your display if you give it half a chance*. This means you'll need to supply enough names that it's unlikely you trail off the end of your list.

Here's a start:

<font face="'Lucida Handwriting', 'Lucida Calligraphy', 'Apple Chancery', 'Zapf Chancery', Coronetscript, Florence, Parkavenue, 'Brush Script MT', 'Brush Script' 'Edwardian Script ITC', cursive">Sample Text</font>

You should add whatever replacement for your Lucida Calligraphy font is supplied with your system (since it's likely other Microsoft machines will have the same fonts installed), although Microsoft often minimises the number of fonts installed because they reside in memory, so too many slows down the system. Sometimes there are other fonts available on your installation disks, but you have to take special steps to install them.

Here's what that font stack looks like on your system:

Every Queen Has Her Faults

You can rearrange the order to optimise it for your own system, or add fonts at will. I don't particularly like the brush scripts, but they're commonly available, and much better than Comic Sans. Everything on the Web is a compromise, because there is no central repository of fonts that every browser might draw upon. It's a design flaw.

The alternative is to create a graphic with your preferred font used as a picture (Be sure to use an alt="whatever title you use" attribute to make it accessible for people with pictures turned off. Many people will slow Internet access to this so they don't go crazy waiting for pictures to load.)

Cheers,

Puddin'

* This is one reason many web designers advise against cursive fonts entirely, because Microsoft will muck up a large proportion of computers used in real life.

Comic Sans

Ban Comic Sans

P.S. If you still have your old machine, you can copy any old fonts you like from it.

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style