Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / CSS / September 2004

I don't know where to start.

1) *You* may want the font that size, but what about the user of your
site? He or she may use a larger screen to fit more information on, and
you are undoing their wishes.

pt is a particularly illogical choice for screen display, as it is a
physical measurement (72pt = 1 inch). What does that mean for your fonts
on a 3" PDA screen or a 90" projection screen? How do you even know the
physical size of the viewing area?

Don't set absolute font sizes, but use relative sizing with 100% as the
main content text size. That way, the user gets the font size (s)he wants.

2) Screen width is not the same as browser window width. The user may
want to use a large screen to have multiple windows side by side.

3) Don't use tables for layout.

Having said all of that, there is a great article on a method to adapt
layout to browser window width using Javascript DOM manipulation. This
isn't guaranteed to work all the time on all browsers, but is a nice
enhancement:

http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2004/09/21/

I use this on my latest site project:

http://step-by-step.org.uk/

If you reduce the window width below about 700px, the header layout
changes, the menu bar shrinks and the text in the table on the
"Prospectus" page shrinks.

Use with care and thought. Modifying font sizes can cause real
accessibility issues.

What do you want to do that for?!?

Even if you *do* know what the screen size is, that still doesn't tell you
how large it is. I've got a 17 inch monitor here. At the moment it's set to
1280x1024, but with a click of the mouse I could change that to anywhere
between 640x480 and 1600x1200. But it will still measure 17 inches.

Here's a novel idea: set the text size to 100% and let your visitors choose
a size that suits them.

Meddling about with text sizes in the way you described is not going to
improve your website one tiny bit. Trust me on that.

Phil

If it is your browser, set font size at 100% and use
the 'text zoom' feature to increase size.  ..And if
it is *my* browser, don't presume I have it full screen.

That's why you should use font-size: 100% and let the user decide what
his actual font size should be.