Typographical Design

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Discussion of Typographical Design ... font faces, sizes and colors.

Compatibility Issues: One of the first considerations is compatibility. The way browsers work, in regard to font faces, is that the font used must be available on the viewer's computer. (Not entirely true, see Downloadable Fonts below.) Not all users have all font faces; thus, it is possible to use a particular font face which looks great on some machines and then defaults to Times Roman (or whatever the default Font has been set to on the viewer's computer) when a viewer's computer does not have the font specified for a page. It is impossible to know exactly how a given font will be displayed in all browsers on all computers. If a particular font face is critical for presentation purposes, such as a logo type, then the text (in the required font) should be converted to a GIF image.

An example: The first three paragraphs on this page use the Verdana Font Face and include a substitute Font Face of Helvetica if the viewer's computer does not have Verdana. This page will correctly display this paragraph text on the most computers using Internet Explorer V.5.0+; but, on the same computer with Netscape V.4.06 the page displays in Times Roman. This is caused by the method used with HTML coding to set the font faces (in this case a document wide coding). The HTML method used is HTML V.4.01. and Netscape V.4.06 is supposed to be compatible, but Netscape fails in this instance. To make Netscape V.4.06 view text on this page in Verdana, a different HTML coding method is required. The next paragraph displays correctly in Netscape V.4.06. The reason Netscape V.4.06 fails is that the above text is coded using document wide code as opposed to paragraph wide code.

Test of Verdana Font Face in Netscape V.4.06 using paragraph coding instead of document wide coding. This is the kind of incompatibility which causes insanity in the web development community. Of course, if your browser displays the first three paragraphs correctly, in Verdana, then you can't see the change in Font Face for this paragraph. So, look at the next paragraph.

Test of compatibility which should fail on almost all viewers' browsers (including yours):

How now brown fox? The type face is supposed to be Decotura ICG, but the font face is rare and probably not installed on your computer. Thus, your computer is using your default font. Decotura ICG should look like this:

A GIF image has been used to display "How now brown fox?" and is why a GIF image should be used to display text when a particular Font Face is critical.

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