Hello everyone again, I'm getting back into the web-design world once again (after being absent for some time) and I'm striving to understand some of the true professional core web-design tactics used throughout the web.
My question today relates to the famous font: "Helvetica Neue".
According to CSS Font Stack, which can be found here: http://cssfontstack.com/
Helvetica Neue seems to be a "web safe font".
What I'm not understanding is that even with that special line of placed in the html or body css elements:
font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
Now while my understanding of font-families in the web design world are semi-limited (yes there are some simple basics I don't even know, it happens) does that mean the "Helvetica Neue" font will default and display even on the most updated browser? Or is it destined to default down to Arial a majority of the time (provided the user doesn't have Helvetica Neue or Helvetica installed on their machines)? Some websites, (i.e. Hubspot) will have their fonts displayed regardless whether the font is installed on the machine or not (Which I'm imaging what we would call a web-safe font and whether thats the CSS or JS enabling it to happen - I'm not sure.) It's not to say I can't download the font, upload it to my website for compatiable viewing, but that doesn't seem like the most appropriate tactic.
The follow up question to this, does anyone have any good books and/or regarding web-design font tactics? I'm always looking to explore as much as I can in my field.