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px2em Conversion

Sent by Michael Landis on 30 November 2003 21:09


Tonico wrote:

> I was curious how much ems is 12px. In most browsers the
> default font-size is 16px.

As others have mentioned, default font sizes depend on the browser,
operating system, and user.

If you are looking for a good comparison of font sizes, take a look at Owen
Briggs' immense compilation of font size comparisons:

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/typography/

He suggests that 76% (0.76em) is consistent across all browsers. Eyeballing
it, I make it out to be equivalent to the old-fashioned < font size="2" >
on IE PC, which was a common size used across non-CSS sites from before.
That may be a more web-useful equivalent for font comparisons than point
sizes, which were never really applicable on a monitor.

As a note, ems can get kinda tricky in IE unless you give the body or html
element a percentage size. This seems to stabilize IE, so that ems act like
percentages (as they should for fonts). Without a base percentage
definition, IE expands or contracts em-sizes fonts way too much, making
mouse-type or elephant type when you change the font size from "Medium" in
the browser to something else.

HTH,

MikeL

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