{What about doo hickey's and stars and Booms and Kapows and all that odd stuff we don't have as a default and when someone doesn't install them, what would they see??} They're called "Dingbats" (my dad worked as a printer for years...). Usually, if the font is ornate (like most Dingbat/Wingding fonts tend to be), Windows defaults to the Symbol font set (mostly Greek and mathematical characters), or at least this has been my experience. {And incidently the reason I asked is someone told me this may be a problem, but I have browsed comics many times and NEVER installed any comic fonts but have no problem seeing them, why???} Generally, the person who designed the site did one of three things: 1) Included the text baloons as part of the image - that way the page looks the same to EVERYONE visiting the site, whether they have the font or not. 2) Included a list of alternate fonts in the HTML (I've seen these tags - they're a NIGHTMARE to figure out, but work very well). THese lists search the visitor's font directory until they find a match against the list (first searching by Font Name, then by Font Family), and use that font. 3) Your computer interpreted whatever font they did use as one your system has installed (or you actually DO have the font installed but didn't know it). {What do you mean by embed?? Explain please?? } In the context I used it in, I meant the text is part of the image, not a separate file/page element (just as GhostofMacbeth, Gawain, and krbtv said in different words). But if the page was done in a PDF format, fonts can actually be embedded in the page via an "Embed Font" command - I don't remember exactly how it works, but you can elect to have the entire font included with the file (but only for that file), only the characters used included, or the file searches your font list for a best match.