I don't know whether Helvetica is among them, but Linotype does offer a bunch of .eot’s, including Univers.
http://www.linotype.com/en/5926/eotfonts.html

That Univers on the Linotype website looks rather like Verdana! Even in IE.

In a pinch you can always link directly to an .OTF of Nimbus Sans L.

You can either use TeX Gyre Heros or go directly to the source and roll your own: Nimbus Sans L

I should add that a better source directory for the original URW++ fonts is at tex.ac.uk

The relevant files for Nimbus Sans L are prefixed with uhv*

Ascender offers various members of the Arial font family as web fonts: http://www.ascenderfonts.com/font/arial-regular.aspx Ascender Web Fonts is a hosted service that provides support for all the popular browsers.

Why would one set up Arial as a web font instead of counting on it being installed on the target computers? Who is paying the $15-$105/year to use Arial on their website?

Why would you not just put font-family:Helvetica, Arial in the css, who's going to be looking at this and not have either of those installed? Just curious.

>Why would one set up Arial as a web font instead of counting on it being installed on the target computers?

So that the counting on you speak of is converted to fact. The web developer can make any assumption they want, but in the end, if a user doesn't fit the assumptions, it's too late once the site hits the user's screen.

Cheers!

Why would one set up Arial as a web font instead of counting on it being installed on the target computers?

I agree if all one was trying to do was rely on Arial. BUT, there aren't very many styles of Arial or Helvetica one can reasonably count on being available, compared to the number of styles of Helvetica that exist. If a designer wants a reasonable "palette" of styles to work with, some other web font solution seems called for, besides relying on system fonts.

Cheers,

T

Thanks for all the info.

To clarify, we're really looking to be able to use all the extended weights such as Ultra Light. As such, that doesn't really leave us with many valid clones. Looks like we're going to go the Linotype route and will looking web license options down the road.