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font-family property

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

Syntax

font-family: [ [ <family-name> | <generic-family> ] [ , | <family-name> | <generic-family> ]* ]

Property values

family-name: Any of the available font families supported by the browser. For example, Times, Helvetica, Zapf-Chancery, Western, or Courier.
generic-family: Any of the following font families: serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy, or monospace.

CSS information

Applies To	All elements
Media	visual
Inherited	1
Initial Value

Standards information

CSS 2.1, Section 5.2.2

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 .

Code example: http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/author/dhtml/refs/font-family.htm


<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
	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 it with the mouse to change the font-family style 
attribute to COURIER.</P>
</body>
</html>

The following example shows how to use inline scripting to change the font-family property.

Code example: http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/author/dhtml/refs/fontFamily.htm


<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 it with the mouse to change the fontFamily style 
property to COURIER. 
</div>
</body>
</html>

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 wants to use 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>

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