The Web Design Group

BASEFONT - Base Font Change

Syntax <BASEFONT>
Attribute Specifications
  • SIZE=CDATA (font size adjustment)
  • COLOR=Color (font color adjustment)
  • FACE=CDATA (font face adjustment)
  • ID=ID (unique ID)
Contents Empty
Contained in Inline elements, block-level elements except PRE

The BASEFONT element, deprecated in HTML 4.0 in favor of style sheets, allows authors to suggest rudimentary font changes. Use of the BASEFONT element brings the same usability and accessibility problems as FONT, as discussed in the article What's Wrong With FONT?

Unlike FONT, BASEFONT's changes affect the base font, and so apply to all content following the BASEFONT element except for headings. However, most browsers fail to apply changes in the base font size and color to TABLEs.

BASEFONT's required SIZE attribute specifies the font size to use on a browser-dependent scale of 1 to 7, with the default being 3.

The poorly supported COLOR and FACE attributes suggest a font color and face, respectively. Style sheets are better supported and more flexible than BASEFONT's COLOR and FACE attributes.

More Information

Maintained by Liam Quinn <liam@htmlhelp.com>

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Copyright © 1998 by Liam Quinn. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).