[thelist] Font sizing revisited

[Bruce Heerssen]

An age-old conundrum (in web years) to be sure, but one that was never 
answered to my satisfaction. Specifying font sizes in pixels means that 
they are not resizable in most browsers and lead to tiny text for people 
that browse at high resolutions on small monitors. Em's have problems as 
well, as do percentages.

So, I've resorted to using named sizes (x-small, large, xx-large, etc.). 
Unlike other methods, this method sizes text according to the default 
size in the browser's preferences menu. I have yet to find a (reasonably 
modern) browser that does not recognize these units. My thinking is 
this: most users probably have the default font size in their browser 
set to a comfortable level, so all I need to do is size the text 
relative to their default. And, if they don't have their browser prefs 
set up, this method does respond to resizing.

Is this a good strategy? If not, why? Are there any reasonably popular 
browser/OS combinations that don't play well with this strategy?

TIA

-Bruce