Default fonts with style sheets and without

In an attempt to demonstrate to a friend how a page could be made more
accessible, I redid her "first web page" in a more accessible format. She
had used a font tag to specify the font-family for one item (a heading). I
did the same using a style sheet. All the other text (what little there was
of it) was left to the default font-family.

Now, here is the odd part: When I look at her page, the default text is
sans-serif. When I look at mine, the default text is serif. But I am looking
at both on the same browser (IE 5.5 beta), and a thorough search of both
(very simple) pages revealed no other font information.

My questions is this: does the IE browser handle default fonts differently
simply because a style sheet is included? How strange.

I was trying to show that the page could be made to look identical, but now
I have no way to do that without knowing what the default font is on her
browser. Even then, it would only work if she didn't change it.

Has anyone else noticed this behavior? Is there an explanation? Is there a
default style sheet in IE that mine is cascading from? How can I change it?
Any and all help appreciated.

The pages are here:

Original
http://students.washington.edu/yinju/lis498.html

Revised
http://munat.org/christie

Thanks,

Charles F. Munat
Munat, Inc.
Seattle, Washington

Received on Saturday, 1 July 2000 20:00:25 UTC