Sent by Duncan O'Neill on 26 August 2002 23:11
Timothy J. Luoma wrote:
> The one thing everyone agrees on: Points are bad and should not be used
> for anything except print style sheets. Don't use points for screen
> representation.
>
> Everything after that is up for debate.
>
> Camp 1: Pixels are more reliable than EMs or % or keywords or absolute
> sizes in that just about no browser screws up pixels. Therefore, use
> Pixels.
>
> Camp 2: Pixels are bad for accessibility as they cannot be resized in
> IE/Win 5 and 5, which by far dominate the market, including AOL/Windows
> users up to and including version #8. Therefore Pixels should not be
> used and you should accept the real-but-limited possible problems with
> everything else.
>
> Camp 3: Don't set font sizes and let the user set their defaults (con:
> most users probably don't know how)
>
> Personally I'm in camp #2. I don't use EMs or % as much as I use
> "absolute" font sizes ("absolute" being something of a misnomer, as most
> people consider them to be "relative"). See
> http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_26_using_relative_font_sizes.html
> for techniques on how to use them with pixels to avoid problems.
>
Tim,
this seems to me a good short explanation of the
options. Persoanlly, I'm in the process of moving
from Camp#1 to Camop #2.
I've found in testing so far that I'm getting fairly
reliable results across browsers by setting the font-size
on the body to 100% (i.e. the user's default) in CSS,
and then using ems for text size after that. e.g.
body {font-size:100%;
/* more rules */
}
h1 {font:2em Georgia,etc;
}
p {font: 0.9em Georgia,etc;
}
Without wanting to start a Holy War, what drawbacks
have others who use this method found? What drawbacks
in this method do list members know of?
tia,
--
=====================================================
Duncan O'Neill
"Smith The Reporter"
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~dbaxo/urban_legend.htm
=====================================================
