common font errors even on pro-designed sites

I just went to

http://www.headhunter.lycos.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/jobfindAll.asp?st=a&lr=cbly&zbid=1hIMLrLr39LrtHIMXg39tAIZtALxTUaEKJrwPIrwPITUIMCjCj

using IE 5.5 and noticed that the text of some of the words, like "Exclude 
National & Regional Jobs" (right underneat the "State" dropdown), are 
almost unreadable.  Here's a bitmap of what it looks like on my machine:

http://peacefire.org/holder/headhunter.bmp

I've heard that if you design a site on a system that has Word and other 
programs installed which add a lot to your system's supply of available 
fonts, then you might inadvertently use a font which looks great on your 
computer, but results in writing that looks terrible on a computer that 
doesn't have that font installed.

Right now I'm viewing the page on a machine where I just put a fresh 
install Windows ME (4.90.3000), and I viewed the page with Internet 
Explorer 5.50.4134.0100.  Perhaps most importantly, I haven't started 
reinstalling all the applications like Word that come with lots of newly 
installed fonts.  Is that the reason that the Lycos Web developers didn't 
see this ugly writing when they designed the page, but I'm seeing it now?

Except if I look at the source code for the headhunter page, the font 
attributes in effect are font-face "Arial" and size "1"; the text looks the 
same as if I open an HTML file containing only the text:

<font face="arial,helvetica" size=1><b>Exclude</b> National & Regional 
Jobs</font>

And since I have the Arial font installed on my system, then presumably 
it's displaying exactly the same way as it would display on a Windows 
system with all the latest fonts installed.

So how did it happen?  How did it ever look passable on the computers of 
the Lycos designers -- is it easily readable on a Macintosh?

And what are some good guidelines for avoiding this on our own sites?

	-Bennett

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