Type 1 Helvetica, Internet Explorer, and Windows 7 Incompatible

[Mike Wickham]

I thought I might post a solution to a problem that I encountered 
recently, since it involves the Type 1 Helvetica font, and many of us 
have installed it. I was having major problems with Internet Explorer 
(10) not being able to load many websites. It would load them partially, 
not at all, or loaded links would not work.

This drove me nuts for a while as I tried to figure out if I had a 
broken flash player or something else going on. I finally stumbled upon 
the cause and solution online. Apparently, Microsoft changed its font 
rendering engine in IE 9. That in combination with Windows 7 has done 
something to break the ability of IE to render websites that have 
Helvetica specified as a font.

So if you see this problem yourself, the solution is to uninstall Type 1 
Helvetica. Since many of us have PostScript printers, we have installed 
this font on our computers. The recommendation is to replace with a 
TrueType or OpenType version instead. The cost of OTF Helvetica is 
ridiculous, though. So hello Arial.

If you create websites, you may want to leave Type 1 fonts out of your 
code or your IE visitors may not be able to see your site!

Here's a link to a page describing the problem:
http://bobbyjoneswebdesign.blogspot.com/2011/12/internet-explorer-9-type-1-font-bug.html

Mike Wickham