Welcome to the Comic Sans Café, the on-line Comic Sans type specimen and information resource.

Comic Sans is the groovy script font which comes with the Windows 95 Plus! pack. Although it might be seen as a novelty typeface, which is great for titles, it's also extremely readable on-screen at small sizes, making it a useful text face.

These pages are designed to be viewed using Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0, with Comic Sans MS and Comic Sans Bold installed.

If you are using the Windows 95 version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 you can download the latest version of Comic Sans MS and Comic Sans MS Bold by following these simple steps...

   1.  click on the following link Comic.exe [102KB]
   2.  from the dialog box choose Save As...
   3.  select a directory (not the desktop) and click on Save
   4.  the Comic.exe file will download
   5.  run Comic.exe to extract the font files
   6.  from the Control Panel access the Fonts folder
   7.  select Install new Font... from the File menu
   8.  highlight Comic Sans & Comic Sans Bold and click on OK
   9.  once the font has installed, Exit and then re-start the browser. Before you exit be sure to temporarily add this page to your favorites list so you can get back here when you re-run the browser.
 
 

Comic Sans Background Information

A note from Vincent Connare, Comic Sans' designer.

During 1994 I noticed that a large number of cartoon/comic style software titles were under development at Microsoft. As Microsoft Creative Writer had a need for FUN fonts, I had an idea to make a lettering script similar to the lettering used by the major comic books.
    There was a consistent style used in comics, which was quite unlike the style of lettering you see in newspaper cartoon strips. I also noticed that many people were inappropriately using drafting lettering in comic speech balloons.
    I started to make the font in October 1994. Initially it was picked up by the team working on Microsoft 3D Movie Maker for use in speech balloons. As 3D Movie Maker progressed, the programmers added sound so the that the characters didn't use balloons. However, the regular weight was still used for help pop-ups and dialog boxes.
    Because the regular weight was cleanly hinted for the screen it was also included with the Windows 95 OEM version, the Windows 95 Plus pack, Publisher and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Hope you find the font fun.
 
 

Using Comic Sans MS in your pages

Using Comic Sans within your own Web pages is as easy as juggling with one ball. Simply enclose any text you want to be displayed in Comic Sans with the following HTML tags. To switch on Comic Sans use <FONT FACE="Comic Sans MS"> and to switch it off use the familiar </FONT>. You can, of course, combine the FACE attribute with the COLOR and SIZE attributes.

A complete tag might look something like <FONT FACE="Comic Sans MS" SIZE=4 COLOR="#FF5050"> and would give the following result on screen.

Don't worry if some of your readers are using browsers which do not support the FONT FACE tag. These browsers will ignore the tag and display text using their default typeface. Likewise, if a reader is using Microsoft Internet Explorer and doesn't have the specified font installed a default will be used.

Comic Sans MS at various sizes

The following table shows how Comic Sans appears at each of the seven HTML font sizes.

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this document last updated 12 March 1996
© 1996 Microsoft Corporation. all rights reserved.
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