[thelist] Font Size

[Saila, Craig]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Timothy J. Luoma [mailto:lists at tntluoma.com]
> Sent: September 27, 2002 4:49 PM

> Generally the user is assumed to consider his/her base font
> acceptable, and making it smaller will likely make it more
> difficult for them to use your site.

True, and I may have unintentionally started one those debates about
font sizes or accessibility (both of which are important issues, and
whose implications I am I well aware of), and if I have I apologize,
that's the last thing we need on a Friday.

What I was questioning was this line in Bertilo's message:

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

How is (based on a rule from many style sheets):
 p, ul, dl, ol, blockquote { font-size: 80% }
or
 p, ul, dl, ol, blockquote { font-size: 120% }

Better than:
 body { font-size: 80%; }
or
 body { font-size: 120%; }

Both change the size of the fonts based on the user's default setting.
The second rule, though, is shorter, and less specific (thus allowing
you to nest a UL in a UL (or OL, or whatever) without having the second
list be extra small (or extra big). Setting the BODY's font size can be
quite useful if used properly.

As for changing the sizes, Verdana is designed to look better at a
smaller size than, say, Georgia. And until browsers start supporting
"font-size-adjust"
<http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/fonts.html#propdef-font-size-adjust>
there are plenty of reasons why fonts should be resized. (This whole
thing may prod me to release my JS that does mimics font-size-adjust.)

I don't mean to come off gruff (it's been a long day) and I'm not
intending to single anyone out, it's just frustrating to see more and
more black and white responses to so many grey issues (e.g., tables v.
CSS, HTML 4 v. XHTML, px v. percents, Kirk v. Picard).

Keep in mind that what may be "never" for you, could be "sometimes" for
someone else.

--
Cheers,

Craig Saila
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craig at saila.com : http://www.saila.com/
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