Planning and Designing a Successful Web Site - New Perspectives on Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, Comprehensive - page 71

which the serifs are absent. ( Sans means “without” in French, so sans serif means “with-
out serif.”) The most common sans serif typeface is Helvetica. A third category, mono,
is sometimes used. Mono is short for monospaced . A monospaced font is one in which
each letter takes exactly the same width in the line; for example, the letter i (a thin letter)
takes the same amount of space as the letter m. A common monospaced font is Courier .
Monospaced fonts are serif fonts, but they are considered a separate generic font family
in Dreamweaver. Fonts that are not monospaced are proportional fonts because each
letter takes up a different width on the line proportional to the width of the letter. For
example, the letter i takes less space than the letter m. Both the serif typeface Times New
Roman and the sans serif typeface Helvetica are proportional fonts.
A font must be installed on the end user's computer for the page to be displayed using
that font. If a font is not found on the client computer, the page will be displayed in the
default font the end user has chosen for his or her browser. Dreamweaver arranges fonts
into groups, which provide designers with the best chance for achieving the desired
look for the page. Figure 2-10 lists the default Dreamweaver font groupings. Each group
contains the most common names for the selected font; these include at least the most
common PC name, the most common Mac name (when different), and the generic font
family name. When you apply a font grouping to text, Dreamweaver places a CSS style
that contains all three choices around the specifi ed text, ensuring maximum potential for
aesthetic continuity across all platforms and all computers. When a browser displays a
page, it checks the user's computer for the fi rst font in the group. If the computer doesn't
have that font, the browser checks for the second font in the list, and then, if necessary,
the third font.

Figure 2-10 Default font groups in Dreamweaver

Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif

Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif

Courier New, Courier, monospace

Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif

Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif

Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif

Arial Black, Gadget, sans-serif

Times New Roman, Times, serif

Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, serif

Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, sans-serif

MS Serif, New York, serif

Lucida Console, Monaco, monospace
Comic Sans MS, cursive

Selecting a font also involves choosing a font color and size and sometimes a font
style. Font color refers to the color that is applied to the font. The font color should be
chosen from the colors you selected for the site's color palette. Font size refers to the
size of the font. Font sizes can be relative or specifi c. Relative font size defi nes font
size in respect to the default font size that the end user has set for his or her browser.
Relative font sizes range from xx-small to xx-large, where xx-small, x-small, and small
are smaller than the browser's default font size; medium is equal to the browser's default
font size; and large, x-large, and xx-large appear bigger than the browser's default font
size. Relative font sizes are often used as part of accessible design because the end user