[thelist] percents or pixels?

Paul J White pjw at bw3.co.uk
Wed Mar 20 13:27:10 CST 2002


>> Was anything you were looking at set to a particular point size (as
opposed
>> to pixel size)? If not, then it wouldn't. It only affects the number of
>> screen pixels per 72 points.
>>
>The fact that he said he's using IE6 indicates that he's not on a Mac - not
>that any of that changes what you wrote.

Yes, I can hit Ctrl and use the scroll wheel to change text size in IE6 but
the NN6 res change made no perceptible difference (Yes, Arlen, PC running
windoze ;-)

>measurement. Mac went with 72dpi - but none of this has anything to do with
>how many pixels the user wants to see when they set their monitor display.
But it affects the size of the displayed page (fonts and graphics) as
Katherine pointed out, so to say none of this has anything to do with how
many pixels the user gets (I don't know about wants, given most users'
technical ineptitude) is obviously not correct.

>So in this sense the 'WYS' is not necessarily 'WYG' - ask any veteran
>Photoshop user about the difference between 'print size' and 'display size'
I am an experienced PS user, but trying to make sense of how css formatting
interacts with both hardware and browser settings to affect web layout, is a
long way from the print/display difference in ones graphic app of choice.

>You really can't win this one. I;ve had people who complain things are
>TOO big and others who say the same thing is too small...
So it would seem Katherine, at least, agrees with my initial contention -
saying we "are designing the pages for the highest common denominator and
can not control what everyone will be viewing with" - so the end result is
variable, no matter that we strive to validate our code and master our css.
An interesting exchange of views and experiences, nonetheless.

Paul





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