How to implement font-family statement?

[Contours]

I've been told I should control the default font preference order for my web page by using the following statement:

font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;

But, I can't find a reference in the help file to tell me where to place this statement.

Where should this statement be placed? Or does Xara provide a different method of doing this?

Thanks for any assistance.

[steve.ledger]

I assume an SEO 'ex-spurt' told you this?
Xara Designer uses wysiwyg text styles written to .CSS (xr_text.css)
You could try adding your own external .css with classes, but you'd have to significantly edit the HTML source after export.. But, Xara Designer is not a HTML editor as you know.
Leave the HTML up to Xara Designer and concentrate on your design

[Contours]

I appreciate your response. And you're probably right about just letting Xara handle the HTML. But the terms you've used are beyond my grasp (e.g., external .css with classes).

What I thought I knew is that there's a font pecking order that can be controlled. If #1 is not installed on a PC, the browser will use #2 and so on.

I'm just trying to impose some order to web layouts that could look pretty bad with the wrong font. Am I misunderstanding the mechanism? Does Xara take care of this?

[steve.ledger]

Yes, because these are web safe fonts.

Besides, version 8 of Designer allows non-web safe fonts by embedding [it] into the page which the browser temporarily downloads to it's cache. So it matters not if the visitor has the font installed - it's irrelevant

[Abikadabra]

What I thought I knew is that there's a font pecking order that can be controlled. If #1 is not installed on a PC, the browser will use #2 and so on.

I'm just trying to impose some order to web layouts that could look pretty bad with the wrong font. Am I misunderstanding the mechanism? Does Xara take care of this?

XaraMX8 embeds fonts. Not all of the fonts available in MX8 can be embedded, but most of them can. This means that the font you choose to use will be embedded and will display on other people's computers exactly as it is on your website. The website visitor's computer will not convert the embedded font to something else.

[Abikadabra]

Haha Sledger! you and I were both typing the same thing at the same time.

[Contours]

Not all of the fonts available in MX8 can be embedded, but most of them can.

I had been looking at that as a possibility. Do you know if Win 7 fonts like Calibri, Cambria and Corbel be embedded in this manner? And will they display on an XP machine?

[steve.ledger]

Just give it a try, Designer will warn you when fonts cannot be embeded.
Any font which can be embedded will display on any machine because it's the browser doing the rendering.

[Contours]

Designer will warn you when fonts cannot be embeded.

That's good to know (I didn't).

Thanks for your help.

[Egg Bramhill]

Xara places this font family into the html.

View the source & you'll see the following:

<span class="xr_tl Normal_text" style="top: 3px;font-family:Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">Some text here </span>