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Web safe fonts |
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There is much
talk of web safe colours, but sadly enough not much talk about web
safe fonts.
Web safe fonts
are the fonts practically everybody can see since they are the most common
on most
computers. Let's take a closer look at them.
Arial Black
This font is
perhaps not all that common. Its best use is for headlines in large sizes.
Arial
One of the
most common fonts is Arial. It is a sans serif font (The word 'sans'
means without
and serifs are
the tiny "hooks" you can find on certain fonts like Times
New Roman). Arial is
clean and
quite easy to read even in small sizes. Similar font: Helvetica
Comic Sans
Another sans
serif font with a somewhat more "artistic" look.
Courier New
The only
monospaced font among the web safe fonts. Monospaced means that every character
has exactly
the same width. An 'i' takes up just as much space as an 'm'. Use
this font sparingly!
Impact
A thick and
rather narrow sans serif font. Looks best in a little larger sizes
since it tends to
get quite
messy in smaller. Often used on professional sites as headlines and
such. I don't
use it much, though.
Times New Roman
This is
without doubt the most used (and misused) font. It's a serif font and
a beautiful one
too. However,
the serifs make the font very hard to read when used in smaller
sizes. In my
personal
opinion it makes a web page look quite unprofessional. I never use
this font on web
pages, and you
will have a hard time finding a professional site using it.
Verdana
Another sans
serif font, and in my opinion the most beautiful one. This site is
all written in
Verdana. Like
Arial it is easy (perhaps even easier) to read in small sizes. You
will find this font
used by a lot
of professional sites. It is a font I strongly recommend you to use.
Similar fonts:
Tahoma, Trebuchet
Those are the
web safe fonts and the fonts I think you should use. I know that many HTML
editors allow
you to use all fonts installed on your computer, and if you write
your own HTML
you can tag
any font you like. That's nice, but do keep in mind that if you use
any other than
the web safe
fonts only those who have these fonts installed will be able to see them. |
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How to use
the <FONT> tag |
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If you use an
editor you won't have any problem adding fonts to your page. To
specify a font
using HTML you
have to add the fontname to the HTML font tag. This is what that tags looks
like:
<FONT
FACE=" "><FONT SIZE=" ">
To specify a
certain font all you have to do is add the name of the font between
the quotes in
the font face
tag (and the size in the other tag) like this:
<FONT
FACE="Book Antigua"><FONT SIZE="2">
This lets you
use the font (here it's Book Antigua) on your web page, and with the
size 2 (that
is 10 pts).
However, Book Antigua isn't a web safe font but it is quite common,
so chances are
you'll get
away with it. You can add more font names than one and thereby give
more people
a chance to
see your page the way you want. For instance, the font face tag for
this page looks
like this:
<FONT
FACE="Verdana, Arial, Times New Roman 12"><FONT SIZE="1">
You can change
font whenever you like using the same tags. Don't forget to close
them using:
</FONT>
The font
colour is specified in the BODY tag. You can read about that in the
Colours section here |
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