Are there any browsers that do not have Arial available?

Question

I recently updated my body tag CSS from

  font-family: Arial, Helvetica, san-serif;

to

  font-family: Arial;

b.c. I assume that all modern browsers support Arial.

Is this O.K. ?

My understanding is that Helvetica & san-serif are only fallback fonts if Arial does not exist.

Answer 1

Font support is related to the user system, not browser. Arial is a pretty-standard font, available in all major Operational Systems. Also, "sans-serif" is not a fallback font as you stated, but the typographic style of the font you intended to use. Looking at your code:

font-family: Arial, Helvetica, san-serif;

It means: try use Arial first. If not available, Helvetica. If none of them is possible, then use any the default sans-serif font designated by the system.

For your specific case for extra security try using "Arial, sans serif" because in a worst-case scenario the browser will not mess your layout with a Serif font, which is the default font-family style applied.