Incorporating Text into Graphics
It's very likely that with your online presentation, you'll want some aspects of your site to appear stylized, rather than just using the simple default fonts displayed by a browser. Some Web page editors allow you to specify certain fonts, but the page will not display properly if the visitor does not have the selected font installed. In order to ensure browser compatibility, you can create graphics for headers and icons that contain the text you want to display.
If you use graphics to display text, remember that search engines can't index what they say. Therefore, it's a good idea to repeat the text in the image's <alt> tags to ensure that there's something there for search engine spiders to grab.
If you choose to do this, you can use just about any graphic editing software. However, it's important to keep a log of the following information:
Background color
Font point size
Font type
Graphic size
Style (i.e., boldfaced? italicized?)
Text color
You'll want to have this information if you ever need to modify or add any additional headings to your site. There is nothing more frustrating than having to figure out which font was used or ascertain other uncertain information in order to re-create the look and feel of images you created months (or years) before.
