A FONT Tag In Every Cell

layout hacks 1996 still works

Tables reset the font, so every cell needed its own copy of the same tag.

In 2026: It works, and it is why a 1998 page is four times the size it needs to be. Netscape 4 genuinely did not inherit font settings into table cells, so this was not laziness, it was the only thing that worked.

Where it came from: Netscape Navigator 4 inheritance behaviour, documented by frustrated authors everywhere from 1997. MDN ↗

<table border="0" cellpadding="4">
<tr>
  <td><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2" color="#000000">Name</font></td>
  <td><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2" color="#000000">Age</font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2" color="#000000">Sam</font></td>
  <td><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2" color="#000000">31</font></td>
</tr>
</table>

<!-- The 2026 version -->
<style>table { font: 14px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000 }</style>

sandboxed demo · breaks nothing but itselfrestart

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