Using Text
There's three important things to
know about using text on your webpages.
Default Fonts, Font Types and Font
Styles
The particular style and look of your text is called the
'font'. There are probably a dozen different font types
and 30,000 different font styles out there.
Font styles can be copyrighted and
providing you have the rights to use a certain font style,
you can use any font you want on your website but there's
a few problems with doing this.
First, your visitor can only see
the fonts styles that are loaded on their computer. Usually,
these are the 20 default fonts that came installed on
it. If you want to see what fonts are installed on your
computer go to the Fonts Folder in your Control Panel
and see them all listed there. DON'T delete anything in
there unless you have a backup of your system fonts.
Every time your computer boots up
(starts) all of the installed fonts on your system are
loaded. If alot of fonts are installed, the computer will
take alog time to start so, for this reason, people don't
install every font they can find. Also, most people don't
know about downloading, buying and installing different
fonts and so aren't going to have 30,000 or even 300 fonts
installed on their computer.
If the font style you are using
isn't installed on your visitor's computer then their
computer will use whatever the designated default font
style is. The result would be that your unique 'CurlyGoofy'
font style will wind up looking just like the default
style you're reading now. This font is called 'Times New
Roman'.
If you do use a unique font on your
website you have a couple of choices how you can make
sure your special font will get seen like you want it
to. One of them is to temporarily download your special
font to your visitor's computer when they land on your
page. This method isn't done so much because it requires
extra time and coding and isn't guaranteed to work on
every system.
The most common method to display
a special font is to convert it into an image format and
display the image in place of the text. In this manner,
you're certain that your special font will be seen the
same all over the World.
Here's an example of the YAHOO font
that was changed to an image format. It's now a picture
of text and will look the same on any computer.
