The most common font used for print ant Web is Times New Roman. This is default font of many applications including most of Microsoft Office Suites. That is not to say it's most readable or comfortable font; on contrary, Arial, Courier and Verdana are considered more readable.

A study conducted at Wichita State University in 2002 titled: A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which Size and Type is Best? found these amazing results:

Times New Roman was deemed least preferred font in 10 or 12 point size.

Arial was most preferred in 12 point size and Verdana was most preferred in 10 point size.

Overall, Verdana was most preferred font for readability and ease of comprehension.

The fonts considered most legible are Arial, Courier and Verdana.

As far as looks, Times New Roman and Georgia are preferred over others.

All above appears to imply that for design choices, like when a large font is used as a decoration, Times New Roman or Georgia is choice.

For general speed of reading and less strain on eyes it's Arial if using a small font.

Verdana was choice for best compromise between legibility and speed.

All above should be included in building plans for your website since they can affect looks of so many items, such as: Headlines, header tags, choice of colors, links, contrast and decoration.

Despite lawsuits and charges of unfair competition from likes of Netscape and others, Microsoft dominates browser software with over 90% market share.

Microsoft's dominance of browser market stems mainly from simple fact that majority of computers get delivered with Microsoft Windows as default operating system. Internet Explorer (IE) comes standard with all Windows software and, thus, virtually everyone automatically gets IE browser. By default, Microsoft owns browser market because they catch consumers early, get them conditioned to using IE software, and, until recently, no other software offered a compelling enough reason to switch. However, with a seemingly endless rash of security problems, consumers started looking elsewhere for alternative Web browser options.

This consumer demand may well spell end of Microsoft's dominance in browser marketplace.

In response to severe security vulnerabilities, several alternative Web browsers recently gained significant market share.

** Opera.com **

One of original "alternative" browsers, "Opera" offers a significant number of interesting tweaks over Internet Explorer, including ability to open more than one html page within browser, as opposed to one page per window with IE. The free version of Opera carries advertising messages, but for $39 you can turn off advertising and unlock additional features.

** Mozilla.com **