HTML font with Firefox

[Malcolm Bull]

In the web pages for my Calderdale Companion website, I have this tag at the top of all the pages

<BASEFONT FACE="Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif">

and the pages come out in a suitable font (Sans serif Verdana) when I view the pages on my tablet or in the HTML KIT software on Windows, but when I view them with Firefox, the text comes out in a Times font (Avec serif).  Is something in Firefox overriding my BASEFONT tag?

[KGarrad]

There's an article here:
http://www.keyvan.net/2010/10/helvetica-on-firefox/

[alanmack]

Hi Malcolm,
               According to my reference book which is now quite a bit out of date, <BASEFONT> is a tag that is only fully recognised by Internet Explorer, the font name and color attributes especially. Firefox prides itself on being standards compliant. Enough said I think. 

I suggest you alter your approach to CSS to get the ouput you want.

alanmack

[arthurk]

For what it's worth, there doesn't seem to be any significant difference for me between how the font appears in Firefox and IE11. I don't find it at all objectionable, but that's probably small comfort since it's not the way you intended.

If there is a coding issue, then with a site of this size you have my commiserations if you decide to rewrite it. I changed a much smaller site a few years ago from basic HTML so as to use CSS styling, and it wasn't quick. The advantage in the long run is that sorting out fonts etc is infinitely simpler because they can be determined by a single external document rather than changing every page, and in many cases the pages themselves need less code, but you're the only one who can decide whether to tackle this.

Arthur

[alanmack]

I'd agree completely with arthurk. There is something of a learning curve with CSS but well worth it in the long run.

alanmack

[confusion]

As fonts are not embedded into html documents, (unlike PDF) whatever is specified in
the html document/css is substituted by the OS at the system level if the required
font is NOT installed by default.

This will display web pages differently as you have found.

The simplest way is to specify and only use the installed fonts that are applicable for each OS.
No mean feat.

Hope this helps

Jim

 

[Malcolm Bull]

Thanks for the replies.  Sadly, none them really explains why the pages appear correctly sometimes and not others.

As for switching to CSS.  That's something that's never going to happen.

Best wishes and thanks again

Malcolm

[arthurk]

Strangely (or maybe not if you understand these things better than I do) the page appears with a sans serif font in Firefox on an Android tablet, and also in the Dolphin browser.

Arthur

[Malcolm Bull]

I got around the problems by scrapping the BASEFONT tag and using a simple

<FONT FACE="VERDANA">

instead.  That seems to work consistently.

Thanks again.

Malcolm