Headers - So big and ugly

Can they be modified?

[Voxman]

All seem to agree that headers are important but <H1>
is so big and ugly. Can any modification be used without taking away their importance?

such as <font face="arial" size="3" color="#5F719F"><H3>

I guess the size "3" would be irrelevant since it does nothing to the size.... I'd like to use <H1> as that is supposed to be your most important header but damn it's ugly. TOOO BIG. Any suggestions?

[Marcia]

Actually font tags are deprecated and bloat code. The best way to style the headers, or anything else on webpages for that matter, is to use CSS - Cascading Stylesheets. You can do a search at your favorite engine for a CSS tutorial - and here's the CSS forum here at WebmasterWorld:

[webmasterworld.com...]

I believe there are some tutorials in the forum Library.

[Voxman]

My problem with CSS is that you determine exactly what size the font is for the customer. For instance on my computer I go to sites now that I have to increase the text size just to read the site then revert back to my original settings. This makes these sites a pain for me personally and therefore others. That's why we stay away from CSS. Some of the top sites are using it and they don't realize the hassle I guess.

[Voxman]

I guess my question is really this. For titles in the area of SEO... are <H1> tags necessary for the spiders to know this is a title. I really hope not because they are so damn large. Or have they moved beyond that finally.

[bedlam]

My problem with CSS is that you determine exactly what size the font is for the customer.

This is no more true of CSS than it was of <font> tags. You might like to read up a bit on relative font sizes [google.com]. To explain very briefly, you can use css to make text on a website appear to visitors at the same size as they've specified in their browser preferences:

body { font-size:1em; }

-b

[Voxman]

Thanks Bedlam.. appreciate the tip.

Now if I can just get an answer to my other question ...(see above)

[trillianjedi]

Hi Voxman,

No-one other than the SE algo programmers could answer that for you authoritively.

All we can do is work on a basis of likely principles. In my opinion you should be using standards-based markup, and that includes H tags.

You can use them and still achieve what you want using CSS, so without a good reason not to use them...

TJ

[justdave]

CSS can solve your problem so that H tags don't look so big and ugly.

[mikejc]

Starting out with the wrong CSS for your font size eg. using pixels or ems can be the first problem
To keep fonts a consistant size across browsers start with:
body {
font-size: small;
}
Then use % for the other font sizes

[Voxman]

Thanks a lot guys.... you are awesome and it's much appreciated. I'm still learning CSS and this helps a lot obvously.

[Voxman]

Just one more question. I understand now that I can control the font look / size etc. with CSS but what about the line break it causes (pushing things down).. is there a way around that with CSS as well?

[inerte]

Headers are considered block level elements thus generate newlines "around", like <div> and <p>

Apply this style so they don't:

h1 {
margin:0%;
padding:0%;
display:inline;
}

[Voxman]

Thanks again!