[thelist] x-small

[Andrew Clover]

> http://www.alistapart.com/stories/fear4/

I find Fear 4 really out-of-date these days. It's spot on about the physical
units (pt, in, cm...), but its advice against the resizable units (em, %) is
based on them not working in IE3. (There's a reference there also to em not
working on N4, but all versions of N4 I've ever used have been fine with it.)

Given that ALA now recommend withholding style completely from IE3 and N4,
IE3 bugs with em/% seem pretty irrelevant.

The only real remaining problem with these 'relative-to-parent' units is
tables. It's finally fixed in IE6-Standards, but IE5/Win and N4 don't
inherit font sizes into <table>. Workarounds -

  - 'table { font-size: 1em; }' - fixes the problem on IE but not N4; or
  - set font-size on the contents of the <td>s only, don't let non-default
    font-sizes inherit into a table; or
  - make standards browsers work the same way as IE5&N4 by setting font-size
    on <td> and adding 'table { font-size: mediu\m; }' (sic); or
  - avoid table layouts.

> Or don't specify sizes at all.

Or that's another option, yes. :-)

-- 
Andrew Clover
mailto:and at doxdesk.com
http://and.doxdesk.com/