Windows: at about.com - at myfonts.com
Mac:
You can compare the processing of zipping with packing books or clothes into a suitcase: they take up less space for a journey, but you have to unpack them once the journey is over to be able to use them
Before doing what follows, I would suggest you open the programme called FontBook, and in the preferences set the Default Installer Location to 'Computer' rather than 'User'; that way you will have all the fonts you have chosen in one folder, at Hard-disc > Library > Fonts
- so you double-click on the zipped file to open it, it creates a new folder and you can then trash the zip file unless you want to use it for sending to someone else
- inside the folder you have one folder for each of the font families: inside each you have the fonts themselves and another folder with examples of them being used: as with any font on a Mac, you double-click it, it opens in FontBook in a little window of its own with a button inviting you to 'install'
- if you click on that it checks that the font is valid and not corrupted and adds a copy of it to your Mac's font folder, where any programme finds it; you can then delete the font you double-clicked on, or store it somewhere as a back-up; I have 700 fonts active, and thousands inactive in another folder
- you *can* drag it to the folder yourself, but then you miss the validation check, and a corrupted font can cause extraordinary problems that you would never normally associate with a font
- if you select several fonts in the same family at the same time, they will open in one window with a pop-up button so you can see each of the different members one at a time, and a single 'install' click will do for all of them at once
More tips
on installing fonts on the Mac
at myfonts.com