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- 13 01 2003 - 17:23 - katatonik

Relative font sizing

Using relative font sizing with css: It’s complicated.

See also: Size Matters (A List Apart).


"..CSS allows users to override author styles. This is very important to users who cannot perceive a page with the author's chosen fonts and color. CSS allows users to view documents with their own preferred fonts, colors, etc. by specifying them in a user style sheet. .."
That's also my expirience with blind/visually disabled users and experts.
Relative font sizes are a pain in the ass for designers AND template coders, who have to translate screenshots pixel per pixel. Don't go retro. Use html/CSS to seperate structural amd presentational content!
links: here (english) and here (german)

sven (Jan 16, 10:59 pm) #


And I mean absolute CSS font sizing...

sven (Jan 16, 11:04 pm) #


relative font sizes don't exist in the real world at the moment, because the only standards way to use them with css isn't implemented properly in browsers. there are, however, browsers that let the user zoom in and out almost continuously and are generally very good. while using internet explorer, for instance, is generally a really bad idea, it's righteously idiotic if you're half blind.

i do everything the pixel way, but my newer code becomes more and more readable by the blind, on handheld devices etc.

in opera, all it takes is one click to switch from my stylesheets to a user defined style sheet (with big fonts etc.) and everything still looks okay, because i make correct use of structural tags.

nex (Jan 23, 05:40 pm) #


Thanks for all the comments and links. Camp Catatonia itself is a trash establishment where more time is devoted to ugly jokes than beautifulll design, and this won't change. I've used em-units for coding font size for a long time now here. Noone has complained so far, but then again users who can't read it probably don't even bother to complain :-)

I prefer relative font sizing for the simple reason that I'm short-sighted, and being able to make smaller writing look bigger when I need it is of great help to me.
I'm now designing a stylesheet for someone else (who currently still uses -tags!) and still not at all sure which way to go. Anyway, I'll do some more thinking.

katatonik (Jan 23, 07:22 pm) #


funny, that was only two years ago, and now browser support of relative font sizes is wonderful and i do everything the em way. (often i first prototype a page or site with px and have them converted to em by a custom perl script.) of course one reason why browser support is so nice is that i stopped paying any attention whatsoever to IE.

nex (Mar 30, 09:29 am) #

  Textile help