Title isn't accurate but I guess good enough.
Synopsis: Company product uses bootstrap and our default font has been set to a specific free font; so all #site-font, #site-font-bold, etc are all pointing to specific woff files.
We have clients that we customize for. One client wants Arial font for most everything. I cannot seem to set #site-font-bold to Arial Bold - it displays Times New Roman.
How can I set all the #site-font-xxxx variables to various Arial fonts?
I used this for bold:
#site-font-bold: "Arial Bold";
Is it that Arial Bold should be something different? I tried ArialBold - no luck.
You can't specify Arial Bold as a font because the Bold variant comes under the Arial family and will be chosen by the browser when you have a font-weight: bold or similar property. I don't know what generator you are using but try setting Arial as the value for #site-font-bold and see if the bold text is displayed correctly.
Related
UPDATE.
I've tried all the suggestions. But still can't get Outlook to display bold!
UPDATE 2. See my solution below
I'm creating a HTML email newsletter. The <h1> is bold, but when I test in Outlook (2007, 2010, 2013 etc) the font doesn't appear to be bold. Either Outlook is applying a faux bold (fattening) to the regular weight, or ignoring the bold. Whereas all other email clients use the true bold weight of the typeface.
Is there anything I can do? Surely a heading <h1> should be bold by default, without having to write css or put a <strong> or <b> around it?
Here's my code (which gets inlined):
h1 {
font-family:Arial Bold, Arial, sans-serif;
font-weight:bold;
}
Perhaps I need to put Arial Bold in quote marks?
font-family:'Arial Bold', Arial, sans-serif;
Here are two images. Top is how it should look. Bottom is the Outlook.
You can use <strong> tag instead of css.
Unfortunately there's not a great, reliable way to do this with Arial Bold in the mix.
Arial Bold is not installed on every system, so a font stack of font-family:Arial Bold, Arial, sans-serif; will skip over Arial Bold and use Arial instead. Even if you download a copy of Arial Bold and send it in as a web font, Outlook doesn't support web fonts.
So on systems that don't have Arial Bold installed, we're stuck with regular Arial. We can faux bold Arial:
<h1 style="font-family: Arial Bold, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Headline Text</h1>
This might be ok, but having Arial Bold in the font stack is still a bit of a wild card. On systems that do have Arial Bold installed, we'll see Arial Bold rendered... and faux-bold'd.
I'm not sure what's best for your project, but if it were me, I'd remove Arial Bold from the font stack and just faux bold regular Arial. Every system has Arial, so it's more predictable.
<h1 style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Headline Text</h1>
You can try this markup as well: <h1><b>CASE STUDY</b></h1>
As #Ted Goas points out, Arial Bold is not a web safe font. In the past it was not part of IOS either. My suggestion is to use Arial with a font-weight: 800;. It's not quite the same as Arial Bold, but it's a decent fallback.
https://jsfiddle.net/wallyglenn/aez4e3gd/
If it's a problem you only notice in Outlook and want to preserve the Arial Bold as a font for other clients, create an Outlook-only style sheet below your existing style sheet at the end of <<head>:
<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
<style type="text/css">
h1 {font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; font-weight: 800;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
You can do this to fine-tune any issues you find with styles regarding Outlook.
Good luck.
The problem is with versions of Outlook that use Microsoft Word to display the email. I beleive that these versions of Outlook / Word are not sophisticated enough to use the true bold cut of the typeface. Rather they use a fake / faux bold – simply fattening the letters of the regular weight. This is why they appear different, 'lighter' and uglier than the true bold cut of typefaces.
The same with italic. Older versions of Outlook / Word simply slant the regular roman version of the font - they don't use the italic cut of the font (that some poor typographer has spent months or years designing).
For a project I download a template. In its style.css font family was defined as
body {
font-family: "Lato","Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;
}
arial , sans-serif, Helvetica Neue are different font families then why font-family in css is defined as above.
Not all browsers support all the fonts.
So, giving multiple font families select the font that is supported by the browser, starting from the first font. If first font is supported then it is used, otherwise it checks if next font is supported and so on. The leftmost font that is supported is used.
font-family: "Lato", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
In this case, Lato is not supported by all browsers. So, next font Helvetica Neue is checked.
You'll also notice that the last fonts are common, that are supported by all browsers Arial and sans-serif in this case.
FROM MDN
The font-family CSS property lets you specify a prioritized list of font family names and/or generic family names for the selected element. Values are separated by a comma to indicate that they are alternatives. The browser will select the first font on the list that is installed on the computer or that can be downloaded using a #font-face at-rule.
Web authors should always add at least one generic family in a font-family list, since there's no guarantee that a specific font is installed on the computer or can be downloaded using a #font-face at-rule. The generic family lets the browser select an acceptable fallback font when needed.
It is a kinda like a backup if the browser won't support the first font it jumps
to the second
From W3 schools
The font-family property can hold several font names as a "fallback" system. If the browser does not support the first font, it tries the next font.
There are two types of font family names:
family-name - The name of a font-family, like "times", "courier", "arial", etc.
generic-family - The name of a generic-family, like "serif", "sans-serif", "cursive", "fantasy", "monospace".
http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_font_font-family.asp
I'm currently using {font-weight:bold} for an Arial font, but it seems to be too thick. Can I make things a little thinner? I cant find any other method to do it. I've used {font-weight:400} - Specifying in increments of 100. But it's the same thing. Too thick. Any other way to make a font a bit bolder than the other text?
There are many many many fonts that look like Arial that you can play with , some are bolder then others ,
Try looking for a font In Google WebFonts and you can attach it into your css to ensure it will work in every browser
The Arial font has no typeface with a weight between normal (400) and bold (700). Some other fonts do. So you might choose a different that either has an in-between weight or has a bold typeface that suits you needs and eye.
For example, the Google fonts Source Sans Pro and Open Sans are more or less similar to Arial, and both of them have a semi-bold (600) typeface.
It is possible to create sort-of fake bolding of different degrees using text shadowing, with the color being the same as text color, in CSS, e.g. text-shadow: 1px 0 black. But the result is poor. Genuine bolding is rather different from such artificial thickening of strokes.
Sorry man, but Arial Bold is not too thick as you say, It's just "Bold". (Arial Black or Alfa Slab is what then?). But if YOU feel it's too thick for you, you can try a webFont that have a light style and then you can use the regular one as as your Bold style.
My text that is supposed to be Arial Black is not working on Firefox. It's just displayed as a regular text. So I used Arial font with the Strong tag. I can't make a difference between the way they look. Is there anything I should worry about?
Thank you
EDIT
In this particular case I can't use CSS to do it so that's how i did it:
<font face="Arial Black, Arial, sans-serif"> <strong>Want an undergraduate course with more opportunity for hands-on practice? </strong></font>
Thanks for all the answers and explanations, I believe the strong tag is not wrong here as this is the most important part in the whole message. The visual difference wasn't noticed by anybody, that's confirmation enough for me.
I posted in jsfiddle and it surprised me the strong tag didn't add the bold effect i was expecting! The b did. You can clearly see the difference there! Thanks for that suggestion!
With regard to the question title (as the question text seems to ask differently):
The <strong> tag carries a semantic meaning. Citing MDN on this
The HTML Strong Element () gives text strong importance, and is typically displayed in bold.
So in the first place you should use this tag so mark up content, that you want to emphasize and not to get text marked bold.
Most browsers, however, will implement that emphasizing as just bold printed text.
If you just want to have bold text, use the respective CSS for it!
font-weight: bold;
<strong> holds a certain semantic meaning (along the lines of "more important"), and as such should be avoided purely to style something. If you want to "bold" the text, just add font-weight: 700.
Or you know, fix the reason Arial Black isn't working :P It may be that you didn't add speech marks around Arial Black.
font-family: Arial;
is completely acceptable, but
font-family: Arial Black;
is not. Make sure you have
font-family: "Arial Black";
Yes, there is a considerable difference in using Arial Black vs. Arial with the strong element. I will answer in CSS terms, substituting the CSS setting font-weight: bolder for HTML strong markup. (It's really irrelevant here whether you call for bold face directly in CSS or indirectly with HTML markup that implies a certain default setting.)
It is not clear what you mean by “Arial Black is not working on Firefox”.
The most logical CSS code for the purpose would be:
font-family: Arial; font-weight: 900;
This asks for the boldest available font in the Arial font family; that’s Arial Black when available, or else Arial Bold. Firefox does not seem to support this quite consistently, but many browsers have even more serious problems with font heights. (E.g., Chrome shows weight 600 as bolder than 700.)
In practice it is safer to use the old kludgy way, which refers to a specific font (typeface) as if it were a font family:
font-family: Arial Black;
For example, on IE 8, this is the only way to get Arial Black, whereas IE 9 supports the logical way, too (in “Standards Mode”).
If you use set the font to Arial and font weight to bolder, you get Arial Bold. If you set font-family: Arial Black and font-weight: bolder, you get Arial Black, because there is no bolder font. And Arial Bold and Arial Black are very different.
It’s impossible to say what went wrong in your first attempts, as you did not post the actual code used.
I think you would receive the same effect, however I would recommend using CSS styling instead of using the strong tag.
.arial-black{
font-family: Arial;
font-weight: bold;
}
There is no visual difference between the <strong>, <b> and font-weight:700|bold;.
However <strong> is used by screen readers (for the blind and partially sighted) to put emphasis on the text... therefore using a "bold" font will not result in the same thing for screen readers.
If you don't want to "emphasis" the text for screen readers, then I would recommend you use the <b> tag instead.
<strong> tag does not support all browsers, as Arial and Arial black is concerned both are different in size or weight you can say.
So answer to your question is yes.
Using the font Arial Black in a web page only works for the users that actually have that font installed. (Of course, using Arial also only works on systems that have that font).
Arial Black is not just a bold version of Arial. Although similar, Arial Black has a different look than the bold version of Arial:
Arial, bold
Arial Black
You should use a fallback font for all fonts that you use, so that the browser knows what to use if that specific font isn't available, however it's tricky to use a font that is bold by default, as you can't specify Arial bold as fallback for Arial Black. You would have to make do with using Arial as fallback:
font-family: 'Arial Black', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
You could use a #font-face rule to force Arial Black whenever the bold font-weight of Arial is used:
#font-face {
font-family: Arial;
/* You can add other common names using comma-separated local definitions here */
src: local('Arial Black');
font-weight: bold;
}
#font-face {
font-family: Arial;
src: local('Arial');
font-weight: normal;
}
Now, whenever Arial is set as the font for an element and the calculated font weight is bold (which is what user agents set for the string tag in their html.css definitions), Arial Black is used instead.
strong tag basically creates your text in bold. For your case it makes no difference. But it will create a difference if your font is different and you are using "strong"
Introducing new font in CSS with #font-face as
#font-face{
font-family:'myCustom';
font-style:normal;
font-weight:400;
src:local('myCustom'),
local('myCustom-Regular'),
url('myCustom.woff') format('woff')
}
and defining the font as
font-family: myCustom, Tahoma, Verdana, cursive;
However, I have two problems:
Until download my custom font, it will not show the second (alternative font), and the text will be blank.
If for any reason the visitor browser does not download my custom font, it will not display any text.
How can I display the alternative font until availability of my custom font?
What I expect to happen is that the first available installed font, among those listed in the font-family list, will be used. If this does not happen, please post a URL for inspection.
But you may wish to consider the list of font families you use. The odds are that if Tahoma and Verdana would be acceptable, cursive would not be; a normal generic fallback font in this case would be sans-serif.