What are cross-browser, cross platfom web safe fonts?

Question

How to make cross browser, cross platform and all devices compatible css font stack?

Answer 1

Forget about cross browser cross platform font stacks, the web examples usually only care about windows and OSX for basic latin, they fail on international languages and Linux, and new form factors.

Linux never used the same fonts as Windows and OSX for licensing reasons, and font design tools have become mature enough you find a lot of diversity nowadays (not that creating a large encoding font is easy, but a lot of users only care about fonts that cover their particular language).

Font creation has become cheap enough big corporations (including mobile manufacturers) now like to differentiate by commissioning new fonts for big releases (new device or major OS version).

When font surveys were still popular the DejaVu font family had a lot of reach on Linux, that may not be the case anymore. DejaVu and Arial have different metrics.

Just use generic CSS font families in your stack, avoid any helvetica derivative, do not use a design that depends on particular font metrics and you'll be ok.