## Options for including text on a Web site

There are two options for including text on your Web site: HTML text or graphic text.

### HTML text

HTML text is the most efficient way of representing text on a Web page, and is recommended for the body text. The text is represented as a string of characters, with formatting information, and the text is formatted and displayed in the browser.

If you don’t include any explicit formatting information with HTML text, the browser uses a default font and size to display it. Alternatively you can give a list of preferred fonts for displaying the text, called a Font Set, in which case the browser will choose the first available font to display the text. There is small set of standard fonts that are installed with most Web browsers, and you should choose one of these for predictable results.

Freeway also allows you to format HTML text using styles defined in a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). This allows you to control a wide range of attributes of the text including the style, size, color, baseline shift, background color, letter spacing, and word spacing.

### Graphic text

Graphic text represents the text as a graphic image on your Web site, and is recommended for headings, logos, and other key features of your site where you want precise control over the design and appearance.

With graphic text you can choose any font, style, or size, and because the text is sent as a complete graphic to the user’s browser, it will display correctly whatever fonts they have installed. You can also apply graphic effects to graphic text, including a drop shadow, embossing, outer glow, and shape effects.

Representing text as a graphic is less efficient than HTML text, so it takes longer to display. Another disadvantage is that graphic text does not get indexed by search engines, so users will not be able to search for phrases represented as graphic text on your site.

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