[thelist] Designing with different text size in mind

Chris Johnston chris at fuzzylizard.com
Fri Jan 2 08:34:52 CST 2004


Aaron Wormus wrote:

> When I went to their computer I saw that they had the "Text Size" in 
> their browser set to "Larger" when I had mine set to "Medium". This 
> little change totally screwed up my text based layout. My question: Is 
> there anyway to get around this (short of making a graphic based 
> design) if you want to make a pixel perfect layout?
>
> I hope some of you will have time to chat about this, as I'm a bit 
> perplexed :)

The short answer to that question would be no, there is no such thing as 
pixel-perfect design on the web. And if you are a smart designer then 
there is no way around it either.

When you create a web page, there is a certain amount of control that 
you need to give up and hand over to the viewer. You have no idea if 
they are going to have fonts set to large, larger, or even smaller, and 
your design needs to allow for that. They be over-riding your entire 
style sheet with styles of their own and you need to allow for that as well.

Besides, you should not be using pixels anyways. Try using ems or 
something. This will size your text in proportion to the text size 
selected by the viewer.

If you do a search of this list for 'text size' you will find a lot of 
long and varied discussions on how to properly size text on a website 
and on whether or not you should use pixels, points, ems, etc.

Bottom line is that you really have very little control over how text 
looks on each viewers browser and your design needs to allow for this. 
My suggestion, your design is suffocating and seriously needs some room 
to breath. Open it up, add some white space, and don't worry about how 
the text looks in each and every browser because it is beyond your control.

chris


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