Another Tip - Fonts

[E-8]

Greetings fellow RR HTML'ers;

Most people probably know this but I have been visiting a number of railroad web sites today and it is obvious that there are some that do not know ...

Don't use a font on your web site that the majority of people don't have. You can have the coolest font that you want to do your site in but if the users don't have that font on their computer, they won't see it as you intended. The font doesn't magically travel out with the HTML to the user.

This site (TrainBoard) uses Verdana fonts with a backup of Arial. Most people have these fonts as well as Times New Roman, etc.

FONT SIZE="2" FACE="Verdana, Arial"

is a good way to do it. I saw a couple of sites today that looked weird and I looked at the HTML and the font was actually some font that I had never heard of. I'm sure it looked cool but I couldn't see it. People can not see the font that your brother-in-law designed or #591462 on the "1 million cool fonts" CD that you got at Wal-Mart unless it already resides on their computer.

Charlie http://www.trainboard.com/smile.gif

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Ship It On The FRISCO! (http://www.frisco.org)

[espee2]

good point, I for one just depend on the visitors "default" font style... that is, I don't specify a font, and the visitors browser has a default font style, helvitica, sans, arial, (sp?)...etc... but I can see your point, some site building software tools have a choice of hundreds of font styles... but unless your visitor has that font style loaded, he will see the default font...

If you want a cool font, annotate it on a gif, or go to "flaming text.com" to create hundreds of cool font headings.

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espee2

Home: www.tunnel13.com (http://www.tunnel13.com)¤
layout: SP's Newberg Branch in N scale (http://tunnel13.com/newberg.html)

[Gats]

A very good point, Charlie, and one I picked up on a while back.
Thanks for the reminder.
I now specify commonly used fonts and two or three of them, like "arial, verdana, helvetica" and "times new roman, garamond, sans serif", for particular pages. These are common default fonts on any Windows or Mac operating system, as far as I know.

And a good point as well, Espee. Specialised headings should be done as a .gif (transparent) to convey what the designer wishes.

Gary.

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Gary A. Rose
The Unofficial TC&W page (http://www.pnc.com.au/~audiosat/)
N to the Nth degree!

[StickyMonk]

i allways use verdana for everything, if i want any special fonts i make a gif and import it

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Matthew
wheres all the C636's????
stickymonk.com (http://www.stickymonk.com)
Matts Photo gallery (http://monkhome.homestead.com)

[E-8]

Yes, I agree on making images. I use Xara 3D4 for images.

Others?

Charlie

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Ship It On The FRISCO! (http://www.frisco.org)