HTML The Definitive Guide (36 page)

Chapter 4

Text Basics

4.6 Expanded Font Handling

We agonized over including this section here in a prominent position within this chapter, or relegating it to the end. It belongs here because the various tags associated with the extended font model for HTML were part of the 3.2 standard. And they remain very popular with HTML authors, besides being well-supported by all the popular browsers. Yet they have been deprecated in the latest HTML 4.0 standard, warranting banishing the whole section to the end of the chapter with all the implicit red flags.

We suspect the W3C wants authors to use style sheets, not acute tags, for explicit control of font styles, colors, and sizes of the text characters that form your HTML content. That's why these extended font tags and related attributes have fallen into disfavor. Nonetheless, we put this section here because we doubt that the majority of HTML authors will stop using, nor that the popular browsers will any time soon abandon support for, tags that are in such widespread use. Just be aware of their precarious position in the language.

4.6.1 The Extended Font Size Model

Instead of absolute point values, the Extended Font Model of HTML 3.2 as supported by the popular browsers uses a relative model for sizing fonts. Sizes range from 1, the smallest, to 7, the largest; the default (
basefont
) font size is 3.

It is almost impossible to state reliably the actual font sizes used for the various virtual sizes. Most browsers let the user change the physical font size, and the default sizes vary from browser to browser. It may be helpful to know, however, that each virtual size is successively 20 percent larger or smaller than the default font size 3. Thus, font size 4 is 20 percent larger, font size 5 is 40 percent larger, and so on, while font size 2 is 20 percent smaller and font size 1 is 40 percent smaller than font size 3.

4.6.2 The Tag (Deprecated)
The tag lets you define the basic size for the font that the browser will use to render normal document text. We can't recommend that you use it since it has been deprecated in the HTML 4.0 standard.

Function:

Define base font size for relative font size changes Attributes:

COLOR

FACE

ID

NAME

SIZE

End tag:

; optionally used

Contains:

Nothing

Used in:

block
,
head_content

The tag has a single attribute recognized by all current browsers, size, whose value determines the document's base font size. It may be specified as an absolute value from 1 to 7, or as a relative value by placing a plus or minus sign before the value. In the latter case, the base font size is increased or decreased by that relative amount. The default base font size is 3.

Internet Explorer supports two additional attributes for the tag: color and name. HTML

4.0 also defines the face attribute as a synonym for the name attribute. These attributes control the color and typeface used for the text in a document and are used just like the analogous color and face attributes for the tag, described later.

HTML 4.0 also defines the id attribute for the tag, allowing you to label the tag uniquely
for later access to its contents. [The id attribute, 4.1.1.4]

Authors typically include the tag in the head of an HTML document, if at all, to set the base font size for the entire document. Nonetheless, the tag may appear nearly anywhere in the document, and it may appear several times throughout the document, each with a new size attribute. With each occurrence, the tag's effects are immediate and hold for all subsequent text.

In an egregious deviation from the HTML and SGML standards, the browsers interpret the ending tag
not
to terminate the effects of the most recent tag. Instead, the end tag resets the base font size to the default value of 3, which is the same as writing .

The following example source and
Figure 4.13
illustrate how Netscape responds to the tag and end tag, including fixed and relative attribute values: Unless the base font size was reset above, Netscape renders this part in font size 3.

This text should be rather large (size 7).

Oh,

no!

I'm

shrinking!

Ah, back to normal.

Figure 4.13: Playing with

We recommend against ever using ; use instead.

4.6.3 The Tag (Deprecated)
The tag lets you change the size, style, and color of text. We don't recommend that you use it because it has been deprecated in the HTML 4.0 standard. But should you decide to ignore our advice, then use it like any other physical or content-based style tag for changing the appearance of a short segment of text.

Function:

Set the font size for text

Attributes:

CLASS LANG

COLOR SIZE

DIR STYLE

FACE TITLE

ID

End tag:

; always used

Contains:

text

Used in:

text

To control the color of text for the entire document, see the attributes for the tag described in section 5.3.1.

4.6.3.1 The size attribute

The value of the size attribute must be one of the virtual font sizes (1-7) described earlier, defined as an absolute size for the enclosed text or preceded by a plus or minus sign (+ or -) to define a relative font size that the browser adds to or subtracts from the base font size (see the tag, section 4.6.2). The browsers automatically round the size to 1 or 7 if the calculated value exceeds either boundary.

In general, use absolute size values when you want the rendered text to be an extreme size, either very large or very small, or when you want an entire paragraph of text to be a specific size.

For example, using the largest font for the first character of a paragraph makes for a crude form of
illustrated manuscript (see Figure 4.14):

Call me Ishmael.

Figure 4.14: Exaggerating the first character of a sentence with the size attribute for
Also, use an absolute font when inserting a delightfully unreadable bit of "fine" print - boilerplate or
legalese - at the bottom of your documents (see Figure 4.15
):

All rights reserved. Unauthorized redistribution of this document is prohibited. Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors, not the Internet Service Provider.

Figure 4.15: Use the tiniest font for boilerplate text
Except for the extremes, use relative font sizes to render text in a size different than the surrounding text, to emphasize a word or phrase, for example (see
Figure 4.16
):

Make sure you always sign and date the form!