FONT tag considered harmful!

ayushsinhalayushsinhal Junior MemberShared Hoster
in Coding Languages
Many filters from word-processing packages, and also some HTML authoring tools, generate HTML code which is completely contrary to the design goals of the language. What they do is to look at a document almost purely from the point of view of layout, and then mimic that layout in HTML by doing tricks with FONT, BR and   (non-breaking spaces). HTML documents are supposed to be structured around items such as paragraphs, headings and lists. Yet some of these documents barely have a paragraph tag in sight!

The problem comes when the content of pages needs to be updated, or given a new layout, or re-cast in XML (which is now to be the new mark-up language). With proper use of HTML, such operations are not difficult, but with a muddle of non-structural tags it's quite a different matter; maintenance tasks become impractical. To correct pages suffering from injudicious use of FONT, try the HTML Tidy program, which will do its best to put things right and generate better and more manageable HTML.

Comments

  • tonytony Moderator Administrator
    WYSIWYG editors are there to gerneate a useable website, usually for beginners. It isnt there to generate SEO'd code. It does exactly as it says, what you see, IS what you get. It doesnt do it in any amazig way however thats not to say it cant be done, you just need to put a little bit of effort in.

    I used to use tables in dreamweaver, and i still do, however its fairly simple to implament some type of CSS into your designs using dreamweaver, things such as background colour, font tags, links etc.
  • nmallarenmallare Beginner Link Clerk
    As quoted from ww w.w3.org/MarkUp/:
    FONT tag considered harmful! Many
    filters from word-processing packages, and also some HTML authoring
    tools, generate HTML code which is completely contrary to the design
    goals of the language. What they do is to look at a document almost
    purely from the point of view of layout, and then mimic that layout in
    HTML by doing tricks with FONT, BR and
      (non-breaking spaces). HTML documents are
    supposed to be structured around items such as paragraphs, headings and
    lists. Yet some of these documents barely have a paragraph tag in
    sight!



    The problem comes when the content of pages needs to be updated, or
    given a new layout, or re-cast in XML (which is now to be the new mark-up
    language). With proper use of HTML, such operations are not difficult,
    but with a muddle of non-structural tags it's quite a different matter;
    maintenance tasks become impractical. To correct pages suffering from
    injudicious use of FONT, try the HTML Tidy
    program, which will do its best to put things right and generate
    better and more manageable HTML.

    Please cite your source next time.

    Nick
  • tonytony Moderator Administrator
    What is the point in copying and pasted documents, uless your going to pass some type of judgement over it?

    What i said hasnt contradicted anything youve posted, infact ive probably agreed with it. What i am saying is that if your using a WYSIWYG editor then you cant expect anything better than a basic page using overinflated code, as it does use a number of font tags and line breaks and whatever else.

    And my source is myself, its my opinion and im sure many others also, although im sure you may well find people that disagree.
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