Chapter 7 - Web Typography

Everyone visiting your Web site is a reader and responds instinctively to words set in type. The consistent use of type provides valuable information cues to the reader, and recent innovations provide powerful tools for working with type. Until recently,Web typography meant having to use too many tags and lots of text as graphics. Today, Cascading Style Sheets offers a potent style language, allowing you to manipulate a variety of text properties to achieve professional, effective results, all without resorting to graphics that add download time.

When you complete this chapter, you will be able to:

• Understand type design principles
• Understand Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) measurement units
• Use the CSS font properties
• Use the CSS text spacing properties
• Create a font and text properties style sheet

Resource Links

• View the different Web fonts, as in figure 7-3.
• Web Style Guide - Typography

Exercise Files

• Download webnews.htm, the source file for the "Creating a Font and Text Properties Style Sheet" exercise.

Case Project

Design the type hierarchy for your Case Project Web site. Create a type specification HTML page that shows examples of the different typefaces and sizes and how they will be used. This can be a mock-up page that uses generic content but demonstrates the overall typographic scheme.

Consider the following questions:

• What will be the style for the body type?
• How many level of headings are necessary?
• What are the different weights and sizes of the headings?
• How will text be emphasized?
• Will hypertext links be standard or custom colors?

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