problem with font face attribute in IE

[d_eberhard]

I am having a hard time using the font tags for defining the "font face" atribute and displaying in IE 6

I only see a difference when using Courier - all the rest such as Geneva, Avant Guard, Helvetica, Arial seem to look the same ...

I see the differences, between all these fonts, much better in NE 6.

Can anyone tell me what I might be overlooking?

(note: I did review the settings in IE 6 and unchecked all the boxes in the Accessibility dialogue box under Internet Options-General tab)

Thanks!

[grahamstewart]

Can anyone tell me what I might be overlooking?

Try using CSS instead of <font> tags. You will find it a lot more flexible and easier to use. Font tags have been phased out (deprecated) in html anyway, so CSS is really the only choice for the future.

Have a read of Nick_Ws Intro to CSS [webmasterworld.com] and head over to the CSS forum for more information.

[tedster]

At smaller font sizes on screen, most sans-serif fonts do look quite similar (and so do most serif fonts). Verdana is a somewhat distinctive sans-serif because its letterforms are wider than, say, arial. But at 10px, arial and helvetica may well be indestinguishable.

There are very few "looks" you can get in a web page font - and depend on that being what other visitors will see. There's fixed width, sans-serif, and serif.

You can actually get more visual variety using CSS line-height, letter-spacing, and font-weight rules than you can by changing the actual font face.

[d_eberhard]

thanks to graham and tedster for their help.