Sent by Nick Fitzsimons on 6 January 2006 10:10
> On 05.01.2006 23:54, Duckworth, Nigel wrote:
>> Ian said:
>>
>>>But why does 1em Verdana look so small?
>
> I don't know. If you really want to know it, you need to ask the author
> of the site.
>
>>
>> The 1em is relative to 10px.
>>
>
> This is widely misunderstood.
> The em unit isn't relative to pixels at all.
>
I think what was meant is that the creator of the site has specified 1em
to be equivalent to 10px.
> Since MSIE/PC is working internally in points,
> it's default font size is always 12pt.
>
Actually, all modern browsers (Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari, Konqueror)
start with a "factory setting" font-size of 16px, meaning 1em translates
to 16px (where pixel is defined as in the CSS2 standard [1]). I think this
is why the question was originally raised; if the page in question was
starting from the default browser settings, one would expect 1em to equal
16px.
> 12 points could be 12 pixels as well as 20 pixels.
>
1 point is (approximately) 1/72 of an inch. It's a centuries-old printers
measure, and how it translates to relative length units such as pixels is
entirely down to how the browser maps real-world measurements like pt, in
and cm to the output device - see the discussion of "absolute length
units" at [1].
[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html#length-units>
Regards,
Nick.
--
Nick Fitzsimons
http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/
______________________________________________________________________
css-discuss [EMAIL-REMOVED]]
http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d
List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/
Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
