| Depr. | Empty | Version |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | No | HTML 3.2 |
| IE5.5+ | FF1+ | SA1.3+ | OP9.2+ | CH2+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full | Full | Full | Full | Full |
Syntax
Description
The font
element is one that inspires a certain amount of loathing in these days of
standards-based web designing and building. It was originally introduced
as a mechanism for applying arbitrary styles inline, but was basically
misused in the past as authors tried to squeeze the most out of their web
pages. The problem with font is basically that it
offers no semantic meaning about its contents. A page heading should be
marked up using a heading element (e.g., h1, h2 etc) and a block of quotation
should use blockquote, but the
problem with font is that it encouraged page authors to
use font to achieve those type of effects, hence
<font size="7">Today’s news</font> rather
than the more appropriate <h1>Today’s
news</h1>.
Example
An example of
font being mis-used:
<p>This is not the way to emphasise text on a page - <font color="red">remember this!</font></p>
Which would appear as follows:
Use this for…
Text content of any kind.
Compatibility
| Internet Explorer | Firefox | Safari | Opera | Chrome | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.5 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.5 | 1.3 | 2.0 | 3.1 | 4.0 | 9.2 | 9.5 | 10.0 | 2.0 |
| Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full |
As one of the
earliest-used formatting elements, font has full
browser support. As the font element is depreciated and
highly presentational in nature, the better option is to use the CSS font property.
