Text size that is used to display the information on the web page must be set using the CSS(Cascading Style Sheets). Do not use an HTML <font> tag. Using a <font> tag will increase size of the document, and give you nightmare every time you decide to change the standard text size.

Think of the following example:

One day you decide to change all headers in the web to different color and different size. Using CSS you can do change the color and the size attributes by simply rewriting one line of the code. If you have used <font> tag, you will have to edit a <font> tag for all headers in all the pages of the web. Using the styles instead of a <font> tags makes it much easier to give all pages of the web a high quality and the consistent look.

Never use the fixed size values. Always do use the relative size values. Most important reason for this is that, a fixed sizes can't be resized by the browser. The visitors do have different equipment (monitors), different types of viewing conditions (like light), and the possible disabilities (like poor eyesight).

Setting the default text size to about 100% (or medium), the main headers to 140% (or say x-large), sub headers to about 120% (or large), as an example, will make it possible for the reader to resize the pages to their best fit. To see how it works, Select view in the browsers menu, and change text size for this page. Adjusting a text size of the web page also changes amount of text which will fit on the printed page.

Some web sites do use small text size just to "squeeze" more text into the page, or to make page more "stylish". Again, the visitors with different equipment, viewing the conditions, and the disabilities do have difficulties reading that text. Do not force the visitors to enlarge text size every time they visit the site.

Most of the web pages do use colors for different text elements. Both the headers and the links are often in different color from that of the body text. As a web designer, should be aware of a fact that the visitors are able to change the default color preferences.

If the colors for your web elements like header and links are defined, you should also define a background color. If the background color is not defined, the web site might end up with a very bad combination of the colors like light red headers on a red background, or even worse, black text on the black background. If the background color is not specified, the text might be invisible.