Thread

Seems that I see a lot more sites going back to pixels when specifying font size in their designs. Just curious as to what everyone uses?

After reading Dan Cederholm’s book Bulletproof Web Design I started liking the font sizes as percents, but I do like how pixels give you a lot more control over the look of the site.

atm i use pixels but might go with em. later on or something. When i learn how to calculate =)

I definitely need to start getting used to em. I hear its the best. For small websites I set a default size (most of the time its “smaller” or “x-small”) and then use percentages in my classes and id’s in css. It feels the easiest to me.

I like the control pixels give you, but I try to use em if possible.

It’s easy to get into a rights and wrongs of font sizing. For example, if a user has their font size set to be bigger and you drop a stylesheet that defines a font at 20px or 75%, then that’s changing the users requirement - so you *should* design for “100% of the users font size setting” I guess!

Ironically (in my experience) you hear a lot more about why you should/shouldn’t do it this way from accessibility zealots than you do from end users. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever heard an end user complain about not being able to rescale fonts, even back in the IE6 heydays (IE6 and its inability to scale pixel fonts is the foundation argument of why they shouldn’t be used)...but maybe one or two “that’s too small"s.

I always always use ems unless I am doing something like an e-mail shot.

I set the base font-size of the document to 62.5% and then everything is styled in ems up from there. On nearly all browsers that equates to 1em being equal to 10px. Makes it really easy to remember and also is much more cross compatible than other methods.

Best wishes,

Mark

I like the control pixels give you, but I try to use em if possible.

It’s easy to get into a rights and wrongs of font sizing. For example, if a user has their font size set to be bigger and you drop a stylesheet that defines a font at 20px or 75%, then that’s changing the users requirement - so you *should* design for “100% of the users font size setting” I guess!

Ironically (in my experience) you hear a lot more about why you should/shouldn’t do it this way from accessibility zealots than you do from end users. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever heard an end user complain about not being able to rescale fonts, even back in the IE6 heydays (IE6 and its inability to scale pixel fonts is the foundation argument of why they shouldn’t be used)...but maybe one or two “that’s too small"s.

Yeah, I hear a lot of talk about it, but not from a user standpoint. Just the people that are the “standards advocates.” I’m all for standards, but I also like having full control across different browsers. Your average web surfer who knows enough to be able to open up Internet Explorer and do a Google search, in all honesty probably has no idea that you can even change a font size.

If you haven’t heard complaints about a user not able to rescale fonts, then you haven’t been around these forums long enough.  I complain about it a lot.

And we’ve had other questions about zooming/increasing font size.

If you want to rule out people from your site simply because they have less than ideal eyesight, then that’s your choice.  I think it’s an absolutely terrible choice.

I just don’t want you to visit my any of my sites Lisa, that’s all. 😉 :gulp:

Well I found the percentages in the same way Deron found them, through Dan’s “Bulletproof Web Design” book, which is sitting on my keyboard at home at the moment actually. It seems to work just fine. Everything is sized based on the browser settings, nothing is locked down. Essentially its the same as using Mark’s em idea. I set a scale and then use percentages the rest of the way; Jason sets a percentages and then uses a scale. Both give the customer complete control. Combine these methods with sliding boxes (Also something Dan Cederholm is a huge fan of) and you’re on your way to a more dynamic website.

The base size at 62.5% is a very common way of doing things, here’s a great article explaining how to use it.

The base size at 62.5% is a very common way of doing things, here’s a great article explaining how to use it.

Are you trying to say I’m common Andy? 😉

Personally I have hard time visualizing em’s and working with decimal scale seems awkward.
So I agree with Lee…seems just easier but all this could be a matter of perspective.

Here are two nice articles that I have bookmarked but not really applied :red: :
- How to Size Text in CSS
- Elastic Design

Personally I have hard time visualizing em’s and working with decimal scale seems awkward.

It’s actually really really easy. If you take for instance that most people have their default browser font set to Times and 16px then if you make the body font 62.5% of this you end up with 10px.

Now if you specify 1em you get 10px 2em gives 20px 1.3em gives 13px and so on and so forth.

Really quite neat when you start using it.

Best wishes,

Mark

Now if you specify 1em you get 10px 2em gives 20px 1.3em gives 13px and so on and so forth.

therefor 1.4 =14px?
..what can I say old(bad) habits of using px on PS so px in CSS…but now I am intrigued to re-learn something 😊.
Thanks fer letting me dip into the thread.

eayh, i spotted that also from CSS book =)