Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 5th Oct 2008 15:57 UTC
There is one thing that really pushes my buttons, one thing that is sure to send me off on a rant on life, the universe, and everything. I have a 21" widescreen 1680x1050 display - which might not be large to some of the real geeks in here, but to me, it's pretty huge. With so much screen real estate, why oh why do my friends all still insist on maximising every window they come across when they sit down behind my computer? This - and more - is the subject of the latest post on Microsoft's Engineering 7 weblog.
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RE[7]: Comment by sbergman27
by google_ninja on Mon 6th Oct 2008 01:53
in reply to "RE[6]: Comment by sbergman27"
Member since:2006-02-05
Absolute values like px or pt overwrite inherited values, yes. But em is a relative value. It is dependent on the inherited font size (1em == the width of letter 'm'). Therefor, indeed another shrink happens, as sbergman assumed.
You learn something new every day
I didn't realize that, and I fancy myself pretty good at css. I also want to add that px is not, as you claim, the right unit for font sizes, even if you want to give a fixed font size. You should instead use pt, which at least (while not following the user's preference for base font size) respects the screen's DPI.
The only problem with pt is if you are not using ubiquitous fonts like Arial or Helvetica. When the user fails over to another font, you could end up with a dramatically different looking page then what you want, as some fonts are bigger then others at the same pt.
This is all pretty academic anyways, since em is the correct unit in the overwhelming majority of cases. I would say though that in the odd case where you do need to override the users choices, chances are you will want to override their dpi choice too.
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Member since:
2006-01-16
You are not completely right here.
Absolute values like px or pt overwrite inherited values, yes. But em is a relative value. It is dependent on the inherited font size (1em == the width of letter 'm'). Therefor, indeed another shrink happens, as sbergman assumed.
I also want to add that px is not, as you claim, the right unit for font sizes, even if you want to give a fixed font size. You should instead use pt, which at least (while not following the user's preference for base font size) respects the screen's DPI.