text in a gif

[dummyingup]

If I put my text in gifs (so everyone's browser views the text accurately) do I still need to type the information on the page somewhere so crawlers, etc. can read the information? If the answer is yes, where and how do I do that? And if it's typed in so it's not seen on the screen is it then considered "hidden text"? This is my first website and I'm dumb as dirt on this stuff.

[iamthwee]

>If I put my text in gifs (so everyone's browser views the text accurately)

Why would you want to. Use a font instead of gifs.

>do I still need to type the information on the page somewhere so crawlers, etc. can read the information?

I guess you could do that...(syntax is incorrect btw, the example used for brevity)

<image>
 <dog>
   dog.gif
</image>

The web crawlers should be able to access that. But it kind of defeats the point if you're doing that with text.

[rus]

It is best not to put text in an image if you can avoid it. But, when it is necessary you can add an "alt" tag to your image so that handicap readers can "see" the image and so crawlers can crawl the text. It looks like this:

<img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="This describes the images">

Of course, replace images/logo.jpg with the path and file name you are using and This describes the images with whatever you want the crawler to see.

[dummyingup]

Thanks for the responses. The reason I wanted text in a gif-I'm using Dreamweaver and my typed text looks crappy. Rivers all over the place, different appearance in different browsers, somewhat uncontrollable. Maybe it's me.

[HI2Japan]

If you want your text to look the same in the browsers specifically choose a font type and size. Do not leave it as default default. Doing that leaves the font type and size up to the default font of the browser viewing it.

The reason you dont want to do it as an image is the load time. text will load dramatically faster than an image.

As far as the rivers go, there should not be any when it comes to typing in a web program. The default spacing on the web is 1 space only. If you need more spaces you need the &nbsp; code inserted.