Font

Font End Tag: Required Support Key: 2 \| 3 \| 3.2 \| IE1 \| M \| N1.1	What is it? Attributes Tag Example	Parent/Content Model Tips & Tricks Browser Peculiarities
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What is it?: This Physical Style tag is the most versatile of all the character formatting tags and is also the only one of this type to accept attributes. The tag was first introduced by Netscape which allowed the SIZE attribute to control font sizing. Internet Explorer also supports this tag and has added two new attributes, COLOR and FACE which control the text color and typeface respectively. Until this tag was introduced, the only font display variations produced at the character level by graphical browsers were usually Bold, Italic, Underline and fixed-width fonts, or combinations of those characteristics. Addition of this tag to HTML has increased the authoring possibilities greatly.

Attributes
Color
2 | 3 | 3.2 | IE1 | M | N2: Required? No; Description: Specifies the color of the enclosed text.; Values: RGB triplet or a special Color name
Face
2 | 3 | 3.2 | IE1 | M | N3B5: Required? No; Description:
This attribute indicates a specific font typeface to be used instead of the default typeface used in 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. 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. If the font name contains spaces, the whole name should be embedded in single quotes (the ' character.)
Point-size
2 | 3 | 3.2 | IE | M | N4B5: Required? No; Description:
This new Netscape attribute is an alternate method of specifying the size of text content. It allows for a richer range of font sizes than the static 7 level scale used by the SIZE attribute. Documentation does not specify what should happen if BOTH SIZE and POINT-SIZE attributes are present.; Values:
Integers representing font point size
Size
2 | 3 | 3.2 | IE1 | M | N1.1: Required? No; Description:
This controls the size of text contained in the font tag.; Values:
Values are integers which represent absolute values in the size range from 1 (smallest) to 7 (largest). Values can also be specified relative to the current BASEFONT value (default usually being 3) by preceding an integer value with a '+' or '-' symbol.

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: Font SIZE relative: text
Font SIZE absolute: text
Font POINT-SIZE: text
Font COLOR: text
Font FACE: text

Parent Model: %Anchors% | %Virtual Formatting% | %Physical Formatting% | %Block Format Parent% | %Multimedia Parent% | <Body> | <Address> | <Basefont> | <Heading> | <Marquee>
Exceptions: <Pre>
Content Model: %Text% | %Anchors% | %Virtual Formatting% | %Physical Formatting% | %Line Break Content% | %Multimedia Content%

Tips & Tricks

General

The FONT tag should behave as any other character formatting tag would, but because its behavior is an expanded set over other tags like it, its behavior can not be assumed to be as consistent as other character tags on ANY browser.
FONT characteristics can be applied and mixed within Heading levels to provide further visual clarification between headings in addition to system default heading differences. Doing this will still preserve the semantic differences between headings.

Color

The COLOR attribute offers a GREAT alternative way to create visually distinct text/section markers in long runs of text. These documents for example make frequent use of this attribute.
There has been an interesting progression of support for applying FONT COLOR to hyperlink tags. Early behavior of the browsers that support this attribute (which has since changed) was that it generally had no effect on the hyperlink color. This may have been to ensure a consistent visual scheme to identify the links. See the 'Browser Peculiarities section below for more details.
It is possible to set a passage of text to the background color. You will be hanging yourself if you do this. =)
Warning: On browsers that do not support this, all visual distinctiveness gained through applied color formatting will NOT appear. Use at your own risk.

Face

This is a tricky attribute. Because the font specified must be on the reader's system in order for the tag to work, the use of this tag is not terribly wise. The problem is that each type of platform (Macintosh, PC, UNIX, Etc.) has its own specific set of fonts.
Another reason not to use this is because authors can almost never guarantee that a given font name is on the browser's system.
The comma used as a separator is rather unique at this point in HTML development (but is a good solution to this problem.)
Beginning in Netscape 4.0 beta 5 a consistent set of generic, cross-platform font family names are available for use in the FONT FACE tag. These are the same generic names allowed by the 'font-family' CSS property:
serif | sans-serif | cursive | fantasy | monospace
There is work underway to create a common set of fonts for the web to solve this problem, but this solution will take some time to implement.

Size

Decimal values for SIZE are usually rounded, and values that are out of bounds should be set to the nearest equivalent value.
It is strange that HTML heading levels have 6 integral levels, while the FONT SIZE tag has 7. Special attention should be paid to these differences.
Using a FONT SIZE (or other attribute) instead of a corresponding heading level to distinguish the importance of contained text is not recommended. Use the heading level tags instead.

Browser Peculiarities

A brief history of FONT COLOR and A HREF interaction behavior:
Netscape 2,3:
Coloring Hyperlinks only works if the FONT COLOR is applied INSIDE the hyperlink, and ONLY if both are INSIDE a table cell.
Internet Explorer 1, 2, 3, Netscape 4.0 Beta 1-3:
Coloring hyperlinks does not work at all.
Internet Explorer 4.0, Netscape 4.0 Beta 4+:
Coloring hyperlinks works anywhere (not just inside tables) if the FONT COLOR is applied INSIDE the hyperlink.
Netscape's POINT-SIZE attribute is curious - it appears to be an attempt to give added control over fonts similar to that allowed through CSS. One of the main reasons for CSS was to STOP the proliferation of new appearance tags and attributes created by the browsers.
Netscape's literature for version 4.0 also mentions WEIGHT as a new valid attribute to the FONT tag. This would control the boldness characteristics of text content in the same way the 'font-weight' property does in CSS - a nine level boldness scale (100-900) with '400' being the standard default. NONE of the 4.0 Netscape versions seem to support this though. For more information, see Netscape's page on the topic.