Building an HTML Website: The Role of Font Tags

Building an HTML Website: The Role of Font Tags

HTML Font Tags: A Blast from the Past or a Lesson for the Future?

Imagine a storefront with bold signage and inviting colours - just like a well-designed website, where fonts and styles shape the first impression. In the early days of web design, <font> tags were the primary way to style text before CSS became the standard.

What Were Font Tags?

The <font> tag gave designers the ability to alter text style, size, and colour, but it cluttered HTML and made updates challenging.

Example

<font face="Arial" size="4" color="blue">This is a sample text.</font>

Modern Approach: Why CSS Took Over

Today, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) does all the heavy lifting when it comes to styling text. Instead of defining font properties inside HTML, we now keep styles separate using CSS.

<style>
    p {
        font-family: 'Arial', sans-serif;
        font-size: 18px;
        color: #333333;
    }
</style>
<p>This is a styled paragraph using CSS. </p>

This approach is cleaner, more efficient, and makes updating styles easier.

Why Font Tags Still Matter

Though obsolete, knowing <font> tags help in;

• Understanding legacy websites still using them
• Appreciating the evolution of web design
• Strengthening HTML fundamentals

Conclusion

Font tags may be outdated, but they highlight how web development has evolved. Understanding them provides insight into past practices and prepares you for working with older code.