fontFamily Property (A, ADDRESS, B, ...)

fontFamily Property

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font-family Attribute | fontFamily Property

Sets or retrieves the name of the font used for text in the object.

Syntax

HTML { font-family : sFamily }
Scripting [ sFamily = ] object.style.fontFamily

HTML	{ font-family : sFamily }
Scripting	[ sFamily = ] object.style.fontFamily

Possible Values

sFamily String that specifies or receives one of the following values.
family-name
Any of the available font families supported by the browser. For example, Times, Helvetica, Zapf-Chancery, Western, or Courier.
generic-name
Any of the following font families: serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy, or monospace.
The property is read/write for all objects except the following, for which it is read-only: currentStyle. The property has no default value. The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) attribute is inherited.
DHTML expressions can be used in place of the preceding value(s). As of Internet Explorer 8, expressions are not supported in IE8 mode. For more information, see About Dynamic Properties.

Remarks

The value is a prioritized list of font family names and generic family names. List items are separated by commas to minimize confusion between multiple-word font family names. If the font family name contains white space, it should appear in single or double quotation marks; generic font family names are values and cannot appear in quotation marks.
Because you do not know which fonts users have installed, you should provide a list of alternatives with a generic font family at the end of the list. This list can include embedded fonts. For more information about embedding fonts, see the @font-face rule.
The default for this property can be set for Windows Internet Explorer on the General tab of the Internet Options menu by clicking the Fonts button.

Examples

The following example shows how to use a call to an embedded style sheet to set the font-family attribute .
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<STYLE>
	P {font-family:"ARIAL"}
	.other {font-family:"COURIER"}
</STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P tabindex="1" onkeydown="this.className='other'" 
onmousedown="this.className='other'" onmouseup="this.className=''" 
onkeyup="this.className=''">Tab to select this paragraph and press down a 
key or just click on it with the mouse to change the font-family style 
attribute to COURIER.</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>  
This feature requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or later. Click the following icon to install the latest version. Then reload this page to view the sample.

The following example shows how to use inline scripting to change the fontFamily property.
<HTML>
<BODY>
<DIV tabindex ="1" onkeydown="this.style.fontFamily='Courier'"
onkeyup="this.style.fontFamily=''" onmousedown="this.style.fontFamily='Courier'"
onmouseup="this.style.fontFamily=''">Tab to select this DIV element and press 
down a key or just click on it with the mouse to change the fontFamily style 
property to COURIER. 
</DIV>
</BODY>
</HTML>   
This feature requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or later. Click the following icon to install the latest version. Then reload this page to view the sample.

The following example shows how to define a hierarchy of fonts, in this case, an embedded font and a system font. The browser goes through the list until it finds a font it can apply. This is useful when the Web author wishes to employ fonts that might or might not be accessible or loaded onto a user's machine.
<STYLE type="text/css">
   @font-face {
      font-family: "My_font";
      src: url(http://www.adatum.com/some_font_file.eot);
   }
   BODY {font-family: "My_font", Arial}
</STYLE>

Standards Information

This property is defined in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Level 1 (CSS1) .

Applies To

A, ADDRESS, B, BASEFONT, BIG, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, BUTTON, CAPTION, CENTER, CITE, CODE, COL, COLGROUP, currentStyle, CUSTOM, DD, defaults, DFN, DIR, DIV, DL, DT, EM, FIELDSET, FORM, hn, HTML, I, IMG, INPUT type=button, INPUT type=checkbox, INPUT type=file, INPUT type=image, INPUT type=password, INPUT type=radio, INPUT type=reset, INPUT type=submit, INPUT type=text, ISINDEX, KBD, LABEL, LEGEND, LI, LISTING, MARQUEE, MENU, OL, P, PLAINTEXT, PRE, runtimeStyle, S, SAMP, SELECT, SMALL, SPAN, STRIKE, STRONG, style, SUB, SUP, TABLE, TBODY, TD, TEXTAREA, TFOOT, TH, THEAD, TR, TT, U, UL, VAR, XMP, CSSCurrentStyleDeclaration Constructor, CSSRuleStyleDeclaration Constructor, CSSStyleDeclaration Constructor

See Also

font

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Annotations

An explanation of generic font families

yecril | Edit | Show History

The family names listed correspond to the generic names in listing order; however, they are not provided by Microsoft. Internet Explorer uses the following substitutions for the generic fonts at my place: Times New Roman, Arial, Comic Sans MS, Blackadder ITC and Courier New. Times, Helvetica, and Courier are correctly substituted if declared; the other ones are not.
It should be noted that Comic Sans MS is a compatible replacement for Zapf-Chancery but Blackadder ITC is radically different from Western (both are decorative, but around different motives). A cursive font is better known as a script font; that does not necessarily mean a running script. Indeed, both Zapf-Chancery and Comic Sans MS have block glyphs. A fantasy font is a decorative font; nothing can be assumed about the shape and character of the glyphs except that they are decorative.

The CSS 2.1 specification orders that font families should be tried to find a missing glyph in order of declaration. Internet Explorer 7 ignores this rule: if it cannot find a glyph for the character in the first font family it is able to find, it ignores the remanining font families declared and uses Lucida Sans Unicode instead. This is unfortunate because the latter does not contain many important glyphs, e.g. for angle brackets &lang; and &rang;. These glyphs are provided in the typefaces Symbol, Cambria Math and Arial Unicode MS — the latest belongs to the Microsoft Office suite.