[thelist] News.com gets a facelift

[Bob Davis]

on 01/23/2001 9:16 PM, zac at zac at pixelgeek.com wrote:

>> MY GOD!!!  I just looked at the link below....The text is super, super
>> small.  Looks like -8 font size.  That is totally ridiculous.
> 
> I saw a link to a GIF image of the ZD Net site rendered under IE 5.5 and it
> looks *nothing* like the version I see using IE 5 on the Mac.
> 
> I guess someone didn't do any cross platform testing when they designed the
> site.

Actually, looking at the source, they have 3 style sheets.  Which one gets
used is determined by JavaScript.

http://www.zdnet.com/graphics/styles/planet-linux.css
http://www.zdnet.com/graphics/styles/planet.css
http://www.zdnet.com/graphics/styles/planet-ns.css

Of course, they could have made a mistake with their detection (I don't see
anything, but that's not necessarily the right answer) which is causing
things to fall apart.

They're using an odd mix of px, pt and em.  I don't really understand that.
Using pixels usually works fine (though, afaik, you can't re-size that in
anything but Mac IE 5), and points is ok if you know the platform (and what
the user has done with their prefs - ooof!).  Using ems has proven to be a
real bitch - I never use them.  As our own aardvark has pointed out in an
article on the site:

<wrap>
http://www.evolt.org/article/Give_the_User_Control_Over_Your_Fonts/22/253/in
dex.html
</wrap>

ems just don't work. None of the browser vendors have really implemented it
correctly yet.

This has also been discussed on A List Apart by Zeldman:

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

If you really want to see something horrible, turn JS off and look at zdnet.
Blech!

bob

-- 

bob davis
bobd at members.evolt.org