Frightened new owner of wide screen finds her web pages are in tiny print on it...

Scripsit Andy Dingley:

On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:11:47 -0600, Bergamot <bergamot (AT) visi (DOT) com
wrote:

Andy Dingley wrote:

body { font-size: 1em; } is the way to fix this.

Nobody ever answered my question what's the point of including a rule that
nominally says just the default but is known to trigger some bugs. If it's
meant to deal with some bugs, I'd like to see a bug comparison (between bugs
it may kill and bugs it may trigger).

Better:
body { font-size: 100%; }

This avoids an IE bug scaling em units.

Nobody ever answered the my question why debate over the pros and cons of
two nominally equivalent rules (both just stating the default) when there's
the simple option of not using either of them.

Even better:

style type="text/css"
body { font-size: 1em; }
/style
!--[if IE]
style type="text/css"
body { font-size: 80%; /* 120dpi (Windows "large fonts 125%"
)*/ }
/style
![endif]--

Sorry, Andy, you're late; you posted that the 3rd of April, not the 1st.

This avoids a desktop font scaling bug in IE on the majority of modern
desktops

It's an absurd second guess that claims that the user is all wrong (by 20%),
_whatever_ he has done.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

On 3 Apr, 07:44, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp... (AT) cs (DOT) tut.fi> wrote:

It's an absurd second guess that claims that the user is all wrong (by 20%),
_whatever_ he has done.

Try it. Find a Windows box with a high-res display and a monitor
that's small enough so that the user has had to increase their desktop
font size (NB _desktop_, not browser). IE has a scaling bug here and
compensates a second time for soemthing that has already been
compensated for.

It's a work-around and it's not perfect, but it's better (for most IE
users, most of the time) than using 100%. Non-IE users don't see it
at all, they just get 1em by virtue of the conditional comment.

Of course if any of this has changed recently, the conditional comment
_might_ need an update to an <!--[if lte IE6]--> I'd appreciate hard
numbers from anyone who has already done the legwork here.

Scripsit Andy Dingley:

On 3 Apr, 07:44, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp... (AT) cs (DOT) tut.fi> wrote:

It's an absurd second guess that claims that the user is all wrong
(by 20%), _whatever_ he has done.

Try it.

This may surprise you: I did.

It sets the font size to barely legible, instead of comfortably legible.
That's unavoidable: it the user _has_ selected a suitable font size, then
your second guess makes it unsuitable.

Find a Windows box with a high-res display and a monitor
that's small enough so that the user has had to increase their desktop
font size (NB _desktop_, not browser). IE has a scaling bug here and
compensates a second time for soemthing that has already been
compensated for.

Whether you purported solution helps some people or not, it surely hurts me
and millions of other people. You haven't explained how the trick is
supposed to work, but I don't actually care, as long as I can see that it
often causes damage.

It's a work-around and it's not perfect, but it's better (for most IE
users, most of the time) than using 100%.

What you need to prove is that it's better than not setting overall font
size at all.

The usual "proof" consists of claiming that the default font size 12pt is
too large and users are too stupid to fix it if they care. It surprises me
that you haven't mentioned this line of reasoning.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

On 3 Apr, 13:38, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp... (AT) cs (DOT) tut.fi> wrote:

It sets the font size to barely legible, instead of comfortably legible.

85% is hardly "barely legible" on a system where 100% is optimised,
although I agree that it's not ideal.

The actual setting, on a majority of Windows boxes for the one target
audience I had the budget to go and do real spending-money-and-asking-
people surveys was 75%. I didn't chose this value as I considerd it to
be under the 80% arbitrary cut-off where I consider you'd have had a
point.

What you need to prove is that it's better than not setting overall font
size at all.

Can't do that. It's an IE bug, and I just can't fix all those.

OTOH, it's harmless on non-Windows or non-IEs, so anyone who cares
should get their act together and a better browser.

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:11:47 -0600, Bergamot <bergamot (AT) visi (DOT) com
wrote:
Andy Dingley wrote:

body { font-size: 1em; }

Better:
body { font-size: 100%; }

Nobody ever answered the my question why debate over the pros and cons of
two nominally equivalent rules (both just stating the default) when there's
the simple option of not using either of them.

If you use em units for anything at all (margins, widths, etc.) then
omitting font-size:100% probably won't give results in IE that are
comparable to other browsers, all other things being equal. It can mess
up positioning, among other things.

Better safe than sorry, don't you think?

--
Berg

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela (AT) cs (DOT) tut.fi> writes:

Andy Dingley wrote:

body { font-size: 1em; } is the way to fix this.

Nobody ever answered my question what's the point of including a rule
that nominally says just the default but is known to trigger some
bugs.

Is triggering bugs in IE a bad thing? :-)

sherm--

--
Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Scripsit Andy Dingley:

85% is hardly "barely legible" on a system where 100% is optimised,

So 80% is 85% now?

For a common default size of 12pt, 80% means 9.6pt, which might get rounded
to 10pt or 9.5pt. There's a considerable difference between 12pt and 10pt in
many fonts, including commonly used fonts. I'm surprised at the observation
that you apparently didn't check this.

although I agree that it's not ideal.

Yet you told that 80% is the best solution.

What you need to prove is that it's better than not setting overall
font size at all.

Can't do that.

I kind of suspected you cannot prove your claims.

It's an IE bug, and I just can't fix all those.

Or maybe you use pronouns sloppily and still insist on your claim and just
fail to provide any proof.

OTOH, it's harmless on non-Windows or non-IEs, so anyone who cares
should get their act together and a better browser.

No, the setting that sets font size to 20% smaller than the user has
selected is even more wrong on browsers where the user has better
possibilities of setting the font size.

But I'm satisfied with your elitistic final remark, which confirms that you
have run out of excuses for purported arguments in this discussion.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Scripsit Bergamot:

If you use em units for anything at all (margins, widths, etc.) then
omitting font-size:100% probably won't give results in IE that are
comparable to other browsers, all other things being equal. It can
mess up positioning, among other things.

I'm still waiting for some definite statements of how defaulting font-size
would cause trouble and some URLs of demos.

Better safe than sorry, don't you think?

How would it be safe? What guarantee do I have that some browsers won't get
upset by that 100%?

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Bergamot wrote:

Honestly, I think you argue for its own sake. Pick something worth
debating over. This isn't.

Me thinks you are missing the point. Jukka's argument could be stated
classically: if it works, don't fix it. But you are saying: it don't
work, fix it ("It can mess up positioning, among other things.").

Jukka is asking for some beef, while you are evading the question.

Osmo

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

What guarantee do I have that some browsers won't get
upset by that 100%?

What guarantee do any of us have that any browser will [not] get upset
over anything?

Honestly, I think you argue for its own sake. Pick something worth
debating over. This isn't.

--
Berg