For Thunderbird, can't get first line, body, and signature to use the same font and point size.
The problem is that the first line, the next few lines, and my signature all have different fonts and point sizes and I can't see how to make them consistent.
When I go to Tools->Options->Display tab, I set the default font to Georgia, Size 12 (which I guess is 12 pt).
Then I go to the Composition tab. In the HTML section, I set the font to Georgia and the Size to Medium. It is not clear how these settings differ from the ones on the Display tab page. As an aside, some applications that I use have a Help button on the page that opens a panel which explains every control and field on that tab page. Such help in Thunderbird would go a long way in helping users understand how to use each feature.
Next, I go to Tools->Account Settings, select the e-mail account, check the box marked Use HTML, and fill in the signature text. This is the code I inserted:
<p>Yours,
<p>
<p>Michael F.
==========
<p>
Then I save everything.
When I open a new message, several lines appear but with different specs:
line 1: blank (Paragraph, Georgia, Medium) (reverts to Variable Width) line 2: blank (Body Text, Variable Width, Medium) line 3: - (Body Text, Variable Width, Medium) line 4: blank (Paragraph, Georgia, Medium) line 5: Yours, (Paragraph, Georgia, Medium) line 6: Michael F. (Paragraph, Georgia, Medium) line 7
I see how the last four lines come from my signature code, but how do I make all the lises use the same settings?
Chosen solution
Thunderbird does have a slightly uneasy relationship with HTML markup.
First, the Tools->Options->Display settings are just that; for DISPLAY. They don't affect what goes into your composed messages.
These display settings are most relevant for plain text messages. Plain text doesn't have any instructions about text formatting, so these settings are your opportunity to set the size, typeface, font family etc for such messages to suit YOUR reading preferences.
If you go through to the advanced display settings page, you'll find a checkbox for "allow messages to use other fonts". This allows fancy messages to display as the sender intended you to see them. Clear the checkbox and your own choices will (by and large) prevail, inasmuch as to how they are displayed to you. It won't necessarily show the fonts being used within the message markup.
The sizes are in pixels, not points. This is in line with W3C recommendations. If we all sent using "medium" then all messages would be displayed to suit the reader not the sender, which to my mind is the right way to do it. If I need larger text than you do, I want your messages shown to me at MY choice of font size, not yours. So my composition setting for "medium" allows this. Your setting an absolute type size, in pixels or points could interfere with my reading.
So, on to composition. As outlined above, I'd urge you to set this to "medium" and not assert any specific text size. That leaves the choice of size to your reader.
Now, I recall having set up to compose using a sans serif font and being somewhat alarmed to find that when others replied to me, my original text was being re-quoted in Times Roman. This led me to examine what goes into an outgoing message and I found that Thunderbird, despite settings that imply specific font face and size, didn't actually insert these into the message. My correspondents, using Outlook, had Times Roman as the default font and so this was being applied to my text in the absence of any specific instructions. Outlook also applied a default absolute size to my text, which looked rather silly when this default size was applied. And I'd been blissfully unaware of all this because I'd had that "allow messages to use other fonts" unchecked, and so Thunderbird was overriding the markup with my preferences.
All this led me to look at what could be done in Thunderbird to set out explicit fonts and sizes. I came to the conclusion that the Stationery add-on is useful, as it allows you to set up formatting templates (using css) so applying a uniform style to the whole message. It allows you to either embed or link to signatures. It also has a very handy HTML source editor so when you get into trouble you can see the underlying source and fix up any misbehaving layout.
I use the Signature Switch add-on to choose between various signatures, both plain text and HTML. Despite assurances to the contrary, I find that Thunderbird doesn't deal with HTML signatures well if sending plain text, and vice versa.
And to deal with messages messed up by Outlook, I use the Extra Format Buttons add-on, which lets me set explicit sizes. Whilst this breaks my rule about NOT setting absolute sizes, it is a least worst option for repairing the damage inflicted by other email clients, and so allows me to normalize all the text in a quoted and replied message.
As an aside, I'd suggest you replace the <p> tags in your signature block with <br> tags. A para tag is quite a powerful beast and allows formatting to be applied to the contained text and so carries some organizational baggage with it, whereas a line break is just that. And I suspect each <p> tag should be partnered by a </p> tag.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/stationery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/signature-switch/ https://codefisher.org/projects/extra_format_buttons/
Finally, please understand that fonts in messages are requests, not commands. Your recipient's machine will display using Georgia if they happen to have that particular font. If they don't the local default serif font will be used in its place. And some fonts that you use will be specific to your OS or even your version of the OS and may not be available on others. As a Linux user, I don't have all the standard MS fonts, so I'll never see, for instance, Georgia or Segoe.
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Thunderbird does have a slightly uneasy relationship with HTML markup.
First, the Tools->Options->Display settings are just that; for DISPLAY. They don't affect what goes into your composed messages.
These display settings are most relevant for plain text messages. Plain text doesn't have any instructions about text formatting, so these settings are your opportunity to set the size, typeface, font family etc for such messages to suit YOUR reading preferences.
If you go through to the advanced display settings page, you'll find a checkbox for "allow messages to use other fonts". This allows fancy messages to display as the sender intended you to see them. Clear the checkbox and your own choices will (by and large) prevail, inasmuch as to how they are displayed to you. It won't necessarily show the fonts being used within the message markup.
The sizes are in pixels, not points. This is in line with W3C recommendations. If we all sent using "medium" then all messages would be displayed to suit the reader not the sender, which to my mind is the right way to do it. If I need larger text than you do, I want your messages shown to me at MY choice of font size, not yours. So my composition setting for "medium" allows this. Your setting an absolute type size, in pixels or points could interfere with my reading.
So, on to composition. As outlined above, I'd urge you to set this to "medium" and not assert any specific text size. That leaves the choice of size to your reader.
Now, I recall having set up to compose using a sans serif font and being somewhat alarmed to find that when others replied to me, my original text was being re-quoted in Times Roman. This led me to examine what goes into an outgoing message and I found that Thunderbird, despite settings that imply specific font face and size, didn't actually insert these into the message. My correspondents, using Outlook, had Times Roman as the default font and so this was being applied to my text in the absence of any specific instructions. Outlook also applied a default absolute size to my text, which looked rather silly when this default size was applied. And I'd been blissfully unaware of all this because I'd had that "allow messages to use other fonts" unchecked, and so Thunderbird was overriding the markup with my preferences.
All this led me to look at what could be done in Thunderbird to set out explicit fonts and sizes. I came to the conclusion that the Stationery add-on is useful, as it allows you to set up formatting templates (using css) so applying a uniform style to the whole message. It allows you to either embed or link to signatures. It also has a very handy HTML source editor so when you get into trouble you can see the underlying source and fix up any misbehaving layout.
I use the Signature Switch add-on to choose between various signatures, both plain text and HTML. Despite assurances to the contrary, I find that Thunderbird doesn't deal with HTML signatures well if sending plain text, and vice versa.
And to deal with messages messed up by Outlook, I use the Extra Format Buttons add-on, which lets me set explicit sizes. Whilst this breaks my rule about NOT setting absolute sizes, it is a least worst option for repairing the damage inflicted by other email clients, and so allows me to normalize all the text in a quoted and replied message.
As an aside, I'd suggest you replace the <p> tags in your signature block with <br> tags. A para tag is quite a powerful beast and allows formatting to be applied to the contained text and so carries some organizational baggage with it, whereas a line break is just that. And I suspect each <p> tag should be partnered by a </p> tag.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/stationery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/signature-switch/ https://codefisher.org/projects/extra_format_buttons/
Finally, please understand that fonts in messages are requests, not commands. Your recipient's machine will display using Georgia if they happen to have that particular font. If they don't the local default serif font will be used in its place. And some fonts that you use will be specific to your OS or even your version of the OS and may not be available on others. As a Linux user, I don't have all the standard MS fonts, so I'll never see, for instance, Georgia or Segoe.