The HTML 4.0 specification released by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in early 1998 discourages the use of HTML formatting tags (such as B, I, FONT, and CENTER) in favor of cascading style sheets. In practice, however, HTML formatting tags—while offering more limited control over appearance than style sheets—are supported by a wider range of browsers than style sheets are. For this reason they are likely to remain part of the web developer's arsenal for as long as 3.0 and earlier browsers make up a measurable proportion of web traffic.
For specific information on formatting with HTML tags, see one of the following topics:
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Changing font characteristics |
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Changing the color of text |
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Aligning text and elements |
HTML tags that define the structure of the document rather than its appearance—for example, headings, paragraphs, and lists—are still very much part of the HTML specification. In fact, if you are planning to use style sheets to define the font characteristics for your page, it's important to use standard heading tags because they help to preserve the structure of your page in browsers that do not support style sheets. (To see an example of how this works, try viewing the Dreamweaver HTML Help pages in a 3.0 browser.) See Applying paragraph and heading tags.