Web-safe fonts and colors are fonts and colors that will always display the same in any web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.). It is very important to choose web-safe fonts and colors to ensure that your website appears the same in every browser and appears in the manner in which you have intended it to appear.
There are three web-safe fonts- Arial, Verdana, and Georgia. They are known as san-serif fonts. You would use CSS to dictate which font you would like for your website.
For example, the style sheet we created in class last week had the following code for a web-safe font:
td, p {font-family: arial, verdana, sans-serif;
color: #000000;
font-weight: normal;
font-size: 12pt; }
The above calls for all paragraphs <p></p> to have Arial, size 12 font that is not bold, italicized, or underline. It also directs the browser to use verdana or any other sans-serif font as a back-up choice. The font is also black (#000000).
Web-safe colors are always a six digit combination of letters and numbers. The letters can either be capitalized or lower-case; just be consistent.
Here is a great website that displays web-safe colors and their coding:
http://andrew.hedges.name/web_safe.html
You will use web-safe color coding in your CSS file for determining font colors, link colors, and background colors for your webpage. You do not need to worry about selecting web-safe colors for images, banners, and graphics, as those are treated and displayed as images by the web browser.
Filed under: CSS
