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- What is it?
- This tag changes the default font attributes that all contained
text is based on. While none of the attributes for this tag are
required, this tag will not have any effect unless at least one of
the attributes is present.
- Attributes
- Color
- 2 | 3
| 3.2 | IE1
| M | N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute specifies the default color of the enclosed text.
- Values: An
RGB triplet or a
special Color name.
- Face
- 2 | 3
| 3.2 | IE1
| M | N
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute indicates a specific default font typeface to be used
instead of the normal default typeface of the browser. If the system
that is viewing the document does not have the font typeface specified
by this attribute then the browser default is used instead. To ease
portability, multiple typefaces can be specified in the attribute value
separated by commas. It will check for availability starting from the
style name on the left, working its way right.
- Values: Comma separated list of font
names. Font names with spaces are encapsulated with single quote
characters.
- Size
- 2 | 3
| 3.2 | IE1
| M | N1.1
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute changes the default size of text contained in the font
tag. Values can be specified relative to the default BASEFONT value of
3 or as absolute values in the size range.
- Values:
Integers ranging from 1 (smallest) to
7 (largest) or relative size changes (an
integer preceded by a '+' or '-' character) based on a current base
default size.
Style Sheet Attributes
[More on Cascading Style Sheets]
- Class
- 2 | 3
| 3.2 | IE3B1
| M | N4B2
- Required? No
- Description:
This represents an assigned semantic classification grouping(s) for the
current tag.
- Values:
Given as a comma separated list of alphanumeric characters. Class names
may contain spaces (multiple consecutive spaces treated as a single
space.)
- ID
- 2 | 3
| 3.2 | IE3B1
| M | N4B2
- Required? No
- Description:
This assigns an alpha-numeric identifier that is unique
to this tag instance. Style sheets may use this attribute to reference
the current instance of this tag. Hyperlinks may also use this identifier
to serve as a destination.
- Values:
An alphanumeric string - initial character must be a letter followed
by alphabetic characters, digits, "-" or "."
characters. The allowable set of alpha-characters is restricted to the
A-Z and a-z set.
- Style
- 2 | 3
| 3.2 | IE3B1
| M | N4B3
- Required? No
- Description:
This attribute is a text string that provides rendering style
information for the current tag.
- Values:
Please see the description of
inline styles for more
information on how to use this attribute and its
possible values.
- Example
- Text Before
<basefont
SIZE=5
COLOR="#00ff00"
FACE="Arial">this is sample
text</basefont>
Text After
- Parent Model
- %Block Format
Parent% |
%Multimedia
Parent% |
<Body>
- Content Model
- %Text% |
%Anchors% |
%Virtual Formatting% |
%Physical Formatting% |
%Line Break Content% |
%Multimedia Content% |
%Block Content%
Exceptions: <table>
Tips & Tricks
- Only the SIZE attribute of BASEFONT is currently widely supported.
Other attributes are only supported by Internet Explorer, so their
use is discouraged.
- DTD NOTE: Information on this tag here
should not be considered gospel by any means. Both the HTML 3.2 and the
Internet Explorer 3.0 DTD treat BASEFONT in a way that I
consider WRONG. The mentioned DTDs treat BASEFONT as a
stand-alone tag, which totally eliminates a content model. The original
Netscape description and observed behavior of the BASEFONT tag in
IE and Netscape totally contradicts what the DTDs say - it is
very obviously a container. I constructed a Parent/Content relationship
based on this idea.
- DTD NOTE: I also chose to include
Style Sheet attributes for this tag, even though BASEFONT is a virtual
container like TABLE and FORM. The Style Sheet specification is still
a little unclear on the behavior of style information in such tags -
so take those three attributes with a grain of salt here.
Browser Peculiarities
- Internet Explorer and Netscape ignore this tag when applied around
table structures. For it to apply within a table structure as well, one
must apply FONT or BASEFONT tags in each table cell. It is painful, but
there is no known workaround yet.
- The only effect BASEFONT SIZE has in Internet Explorer 1.0 and 2.0 is
as a starting point in calculating relative FONT SIZE values. The
effect in the 3.0 version seems to mirror the Netscape behavior now.
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