<FONT ...>

<FONT ...> is the addictive drug of HTML. When you start using <FONT ...> you're likely to think it's the coolest HTML tag ever created. You can set the sizes, faces and colors of the fonts on your web page, all with understandable <FONT ...> tags.

Then, when you've loaded your web pages with a billion <FONT ...> tags, you find out the ugly side of <FONT ...>. You have to use it over and over to give your page the appearance you want. It doesn't work in tables unless you put <FONT ...> in every cell. If you want to change the appearance of the fonts in your page you have to change every single <FONT ...> tag. <FONT ...> has taken over your code.

Break the <FONT ...> Habit

<FONT ...> seems easy at first but in the long run your life will be much simpler if you use styles. Admittedly, styles require a little extra learning when you first start using them, but only a little. Once you get the hang of them you'll find styles much, much simpler to handle than mountains of <FONT ...> tags. See Break the <FONT> Habit to get started.

Historical Information

For the sake of completion and historical accuracy we'll look at how <FONT ...> works. Please don't take the inclusion of this information as an endorsement that you should actually use <FONT ...>.

As its name implies, <FONT ...> sets the font properties of the text it contains. To have any effect, <FONT ...> must be used with at least one of its attributes. For example, this text sets the font to a size 7:

this code	produces this
<FONT SIZE=7>Hi there</FONT>	Hi there

<FONT SIZE="..."> >>>