Trying to change the font style

[yvonnem]

Hello everyone, I was trying to edit the font style of our exam bank questions to Calibri. I tried it with the HTML editor with the following code below: 

<p><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: x-large;">Your Text Here</span></p>

But when I click the update question, it appears to be like this:

It doesn't appear to be in the Calibri font but rather a different font style. Is there a font style here in Canvas that is close to Calibri? We still need to edit more than a lot of questions with the specified format.

Please help.

Thank you.

[James · Accepted solution]

Calibri is a commercial font and is not supported by Canvas.

You cannot easily change the font with the old Rich Content Editor (it involves loading the font files, so you would need help of a Canvas Admin to modify the custom CSS for the theme).

You cannot easily change the font with New Quizzes. The Rich Content Editor there does not support alternative fonts.

However, if you are using Classic Quizzes with the New Rich Content Editor, then you can select fonts by pressing F9 to pull up the editor menu (this will default to being visible in a few days), then going to Format and choosing Fonts.

The fonts available are Lato (default), Balsamiq Sans, Architect's Daughter, Andale Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Book Antiqua, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Helvetica, Impact, Symbol, Tahoma, Terminal, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Webdings, and Wingdings.

If you do a search for fonts similar to Calibri, none of those available in Canvas show up. Identifont suggests 30 alternatives, but none match. Actually, the first Google hit for me is 5 free Calibri Font alternatives so you never use that font again. They begin with "Calibri Font is one of the ugliest fonts ever invented by mankind ..." and continue to recommend Open Sans, Alégre Sans, Poiret One, Helvetica Neue, and Raleway.

I would suggest using the default font Lato unless there is a compelling reason not to. It is designed to look good on a screen and it has good support for Unicode and symbols. Those are some of the reasons why Canvas picked it in the first place. Students are familiar with it because it matches the other fonts they use. I would be in favor of Canvas getting rid of font selection like it was with the old Rich Content Editor. I would go further and get rid of the font size drop down as well.

[yvonnem]

Thank you for the well detailed explanation, James. I would relay this answer to my team and hopefully be able to change into another font style aside from Calibri. 

[CliffordJolley]

Thank you so much! You've talked a lot about the Lato font. I thought the Calibri font was very versatile and used everywhere. And now I know about its irrelevance in the Canvas.