Good typography on the Internet: is it even possible?

HTML Text - FONT tags

The alternative is to use ‘live’ text, an approach which avoids all the problems inherent with GIF text work. But how well does it actually work in practise?

If you look at unformatted text in a Web page it will be shown in your Web browser’s default typeface: almost certainly good old Times New Roman. This may seem like a classic choice, but it really doesn’t work as body level text on computer displays.

Of course, you’re not stuck with this. After all, that’s what the FONT tag was invented for. This allows any font to be used in place of Times. So why not pick your favourite font, or your client’s corporate font? (Right about now all the print designers will be rubbing their hands, and the Web-savvy readers will be grinning ironically.)

The reason this doesn’t work is simple: you may have all sorts of fonts to play with on your Mac, but HTML formatting instructions simply ask the Web browser to use the specified font, if it is available on the end user’s computer. If they don’t have it, the layout will default back to Times New Roman again and you’re back to square one - except that now the layout looks worse, because it wasn’t designed with that font in mind.

There is a surprisingly simple way you can try to avoid this problem. Instead of picking one font and crossing your fingers, you can set up a whole string of typeface names. If the first isn’t available the second might be, or the third, and so on. This shotgun approach can certainly help, but it doesn’t really solve the problem, and it means resigning yourself to layout compromises.

However the biggest problem with FONT tags is their lack of serious control; they can affect the typeface, size, colour - and very little else. To gain anything approaching real control you have to move up to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Next: HTML Text - CSS...