<font> tag in XHTML

[Si]

Can someone settle an argument for me...?

I thought that the <font> tag is being made redundant in the W3C standard but I'm not entirely sure about this. We are in the process of making our intranet W3C-compliant and many areas of text are stylised in such a way that a class is applied to a <font> tag.

eg. <font class="my_style>text to formatted</font>

My understanding of W3C compliancy was to remove all instances of page formatting tags such as <font> and apply styles to <div>'s and <span>'s instead.

Any thoughts on this are welcome... even if I'm proven wrong!

[John Colby]

In XHTML 1.0 transitional the <font> tag is deprecated. In XHTML 1.0 strict and XHTML 1.1 it isn't there at all.

All visual styling should take place using stylesheets, preferably separate but will exist in the head of the document. Inline <style> declarations are also deprecated.

However, the following would be correct:

<span class="my-style">text to formatted</span>

as long as .my-style is declared in the CSS. Note that underscores in class names can cause problems so a hyphen has been substituted and all attributes must be enclosed in quotes - a typo in yours meant that the closing quotes were missing.

P.S. Wave out of the window and I may see you - I'm in Perry Barr.

[naveed]

Problems with <font> tag:
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/font.html

Not the most recent article (Netscape 2.0 is mentioned in it!), but it does point out the disadvantages of HTML's styling elements.
Simply put, <font> should not be used; use <span> instead, as John pointed out.

[Si]

Great stuff - now I've got ammunition againt my rival!! I've always used <div> and <span> to apply small amounts of styling although I'm a sucker for using the table tags for setting classes (<table>, <tr> & <td>).

BTW John, I used to live in Great Barr - just off the Walsall Road! It's a small world ay it? <-- (local slang)

[John Colby]

BTW John, I used to live in Great Barr - just off the Walsall Road! It's a small world ay it? <-- (local slang)

From my office window I can see Barr Beacon. Today I'm working from home. Marking assignments.

[Si]

My fiance went to that school!!

(Sorry for all those reading this post and have no idea what we're going on about - if you want to know, this is Birmingham and surrounding areas we're going on about)

[mak-uk]

Hi all..

.. from sunny Balsall Heath

John Colby.. I don't suppose I could have a copy of your lecture notes for XHTML (that you mentioned in another thread)?

Thanks.

Mak

[vgarcia]

(Sorry for all those reading this post and have no idea what we're going on about - if you want to know, this is Birmingham and surrounding areas we're going on about)

Off Topic:

Northerners!

[John Colby]

John Colby.. I don't suppose I could have a copy of your lecture notes for XHTML (that you mentioned in another thread)?

Replied by PM