Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (Full Version)

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Tailslide -> Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/21/2005 11:11:41)

Figuring out your base font-sze for your CSS has always been troublesome (at least for me). The problem being that different browsers (and IE) have different default font-sizes - so it's difficult to set a baseline effectively.

This article: http://loadaveragezero.com/vnav/labs/CSS/font-size.php says that the font keyword x-small is actually the same across all major browsers - 10px. Therefore you could set the base font-size to x-small and use % or ems to scale it up in your content tags and you should get the same effect cross-browser.



womble -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/21/2005 14:58:28)

We beleive you, it is interesting, honestly...[image]http://www.ddeaf.org.uk/forum/images/smiles/sleepy.gif[/image] [;)]

...and speaking of which I also discovered this on my travels around the internet (towards the bottom of the page there are links to screenshots of the difference in text size between browsers etc.



caz -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/21/2005 15:00:21)

He kind of glossed over the problems of IE5 and mac didn't he? Unless I missed it on a quick scan, which is very possible since I've spent the day reaquainting myself with Pagemaker [:@]

There is a previous thread dealing with font sizing here
covering relative font sizing for all browsers and a good site for fonts and CSS is
the noodle incident.

I have to say that I am sticking with Owen Briggs' method. [;)]



Tailslide -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/21/2005 15:04:55)

I remember reading the Noodle Incident and after a while it was like letters dancing around in front of my eyes like Fantasia! (oh no I can hear the music again!) dum dum diddly dum dum...



caz -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/21/2005 15:12:03)

Ooops, are you twitching too?



Tailslide -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/21/2005 15:16:27)

No the pills control the twitching usually - unless I do something stupid like upload my site's new CSS file to the actual site instead of the test area... oh b****r.



dpf -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/21/2005 16:30:10)

quote:

No the pills control the twitching usually - unless I do something stupid like upload my site's new CSS file to the actual site instead of the test area... oh b****r.
do you live at home with your mum? [sm=lol.gif]



Tailslide -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/22/2005 4:58:08)

I wish.



jaybee -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/22/2005 6:54:24)

OK, if someone can see a flaw in the following please shout as the brain is a little befuddled at the moment. It goes like this......

Taking the recommendation to use x-small which renders as 10px in all compliant browsers. (apparently, haven't tested it) If you want the non-compliant browsers to also have a base font size of 10px then you ought to be able to specify in your stylesheet 

html {font-size: 10px;}
body {font-size: x-small;}


so that all browsers start with 10px then the non-compliants ignore the x-small. After that you use em or % to set the individual elements.

The reason for the befuddlement is, why bother with the x-small if all browsers understand the original 10px?



Tailslide -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/22/2005 9:37:42)

No idea.

I'm presuming here that this: 

body {font-size:10px;}
#container {font-size: 160%;}


is the same as this: 

body {font-size: x-small;}
#container {font-size: 160%;}


Just tried it myself and can't see a difference.




jaybee -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/22/2005 12:02:49)

No because x-small won't work in all browsers so you need to set a baseline of the equivalent size in pixels first so that all browsers end up the same.



Tailslide -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/22/2005 12:29:32)

Gotcha.




Donkey -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/24/2005 11:29:34)

Assuming the original quoted article to be true, and noting jaybee's point above, would not the simple way of applying this to an existing style sheet that already uses % or em values for text (without recalculating all the font sizes) be as follows. 

html{
font-size: 10px;
}

html{
font-size: x-small;
}

body{
font-size: 1.6em;
}



jaybee -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/24/2005 11:39:46)

Yes, but what I'm saying is that if 10px works in all browsers why bother with x-small? What am I missing?



Tailslide -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/24/2005 11:41:37)

No idea.

I tried it out both ways and they both scale up nicely - so can't see difference either.



Donkey -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/24/2005 12:49:32)

quote:

What am I missing?
I thought it was to do with pixel sizes being smaller on macs so x-small on a mac is roughly equal to 10px on a PC but 10px on a mac would be slightly smaller. I may be wrong on this so please slap me down if I am.[;)]

Personally I think it is a lot of fuss about nothing, I followed the links given by Caz above and if you study the screen grabs shown, the differences IMHO aren't great enough to make it worth bothering. Also I disagree with the guy's comment about default font sizes being too big to read comfortably. That's a subjective view based on his personal preference. The user can always adjust font size in the browser anyway, so why not use body{font-size:100%;} (so that IE rescales properly) then stick to ems or percentages?

<edit> to clarify</edit>



jaybee -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/24/2005 15:11:48)

My head hurts. [image]http://img103.exs.cx/img103/2028/fie.gif[/image]



Tailslide -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/24/2005 16:43:20)

You haven't been spinning yer bits have you?



dpf -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/24/2005 16:51:09)

try this tailgate:
www.golfer.com/applyforsmutbrigademembership.html
oops! I meant Tailslide



womble -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/25/2005 3:53:33)

Who's Tailgate? (link not working BTW) [;)]



golfer -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/25/2005 7:54:11)

quote:

Who's Tailgate?


It's a thing that stops your font sizes slide - ing off.[:)]

quote:

(link not working BTW)


It's because membership is now restricted to smut enthusiasts only.



womble -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/26/2005 4:06:57)

[sm=yikes.gif] They even have their own club now?!? Next they'll be demanding their very own secret forum like the mods'!



golfer -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/26/2005 4:57:19)

quote:

They even have their own club now?!? Next they'll be demanding their very own secret forum like the mods'!


Now don't get your 'knickers in a twist' womble. You declined an invitation to join coz we weren't smutty enough.[;)]

No secret forum. We pride ourselves on being open, honest, disgusting, rude and contentious all mixed with humour, innuendo and smut.[:)]



womble -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/26/2005 8:36:19)

quote:

You declined an invitation to join


I must have blinked and missed that! I can't remember any invitation, and my senility's not half as advanced as those of you in the 'old farts club'! [;)]



golfer -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/26/2005 8:42:05)

quote:

I must have blinked and missed that! I can't remember any invitation, and my senility's not half as advanced as those of you in the 'old farts club'!


Must have forgotten your invitation womble. Never mind - it's not important. The Old Farts private forum has been outed by Tailslide on another thread.



womble -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/26/2005 8:52:12)

quote:


Must have forgotten your invitation womble.


[image]http://www.ddeaf.org.uk/forum/images/smiles/cry.gif[/image]
forgetting poor little old me? I shall go and sulk now...



golfer -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/26/2005 12:47:06)

quote:

I shall go and sulk now..


Don't sulk womble. We still love you. You just missed out on membership. Between you and me you need to be a bit more smutty.



dpf -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/26/2005 12:54:50)

quote:

Between you and me you need to be a bit more smutty.
why only between you and her?



womble -> RE: Font Sizes - interesting article (honestly) (7/26/2005 13:58:43)

I know I said I wasn't going to mention those PMs again, but...what else do you want?!?!

ah! you mean not what goes on in the privacy of the PM area? Taking a leaf out of your book when you tried to convince everyone you were sensible [image]http://www.ddeaf.org.uk/forum/images/smiles/smiles2/rofl6.gif[/image] I admit I did recently have an ever-so slightly techie phase and I haven't indulged in as much smuttiness as I would have liked. I will try harder in future.

BTW - definitely sulking now as I haven't had any cyber-kisses recently...

oh, and dan, if you ask him nicely, I'm sure he'll invite you too [;)]



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