[thelist] Font Size

Bertilo Wennergren bertilow at gmx.net
Fri Sep 27 15:56:01 CDT 2002


Saila, Craig:

>> From: Bertilo Wennergren [mailto:bertilow at gmx.net]

>> Except that you should never ever set the basic font size to
>> anything else than 100% or 1em.

> Hrm?! That sounds like saying you should never underline text that is
> not a link. A good rule, but hardly one that is set in stone.

> I can think of many justifiable reasons to set your base font-size
> smaller than 100%. What are you reasons against this?

You have no idea what the base font size in the user browser is, except
that it most probably is the size that he himself finds the most
comfortable one for basic text (otherwise he would have picked something
else). Thus setting it to something smaller means setting it to
something that is to small for the reader. Why would you want text size
that is too small?

100% means "just right for basic text", per definition.

If some readers like to read pages with extremely small size text (maybe
they have excellent vision), they will already have set the basic size
to something really tiny. Using "font-size: 75%" would mean that those
readers get even smaller text, that they might not be able to read at all.

You should always work form the basic assumption that 100% font-size is
perfect for the basic text, and then set non-basic text (headings,
footnotes...) to something larger or (in extreme cases) something
slightly smaller than that.

Now, if a whole page is legalese that no one is really supposed to read
at all, then maybe...

--
Bertilo Wennergren <bertilow at gmx.net> <http://www.bertilow.com>




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