Re: CSS2 Browser Support

"Stephen Poley" <sbpoley (AT) xs4all (DOT) nl> wrote

On Tue, 19 Aug 2003 06:44:33 -0500, "SamMan" <psf (AT) psfdev (DOT) com> wrote:


No, IE does not support child selectors. It's actually one of the known
ways to hide bits of CSS from IE. While we're at it:

- you are missing some commas between the font names;
- it's best to avoid Verdana. See
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/verdana.html
- also best to avoid point sizes, except perhaps in print stylesheets.

Thanks, Stephen.

I had suspected the non-support from IE. I had created the style in TopStyle
Pro. I would have thought it would have put the commas in, and at the time,
I didn't notice it. Thanks for pointing that out.

Is Verdana an OS specific font? Like I had said, this was just a quick test,
so in essence, I just opened the book and pointed my finger at a font.

What would you recommend in favor of point sizes?

Sam

"SamMan" <psf (AT) psfdev (DOT) com> exclaimed in <jyo0b.115$01.24577 (AT) twister (DOT) rdc-kc.rr.com>:

Is Verdana an OS specific font? Like I had said, this was just a quick test,
so in essence, I just opened the book and pointed my finger at a font.

Not as such - it is available as a TrueType font, and hence also available
on any platform supporting that system. However it doesn't tag along by
default on quite a of them.

That isn't a problem per se; not if you supply a list of alternatives. The
problem arises when you also set the font size to an absolute value and
the user does not have Verdana.

The UA will then choose the next font, and if that is present set it with the
size you specified. Since Verdana is peculiar in its height/width ratio it
will look comparatively larger at small font sizes.

Alan Flavell had a rather good posting on the topic a while ago:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...lus023.cern.ch

I suggest reading it - I'm not a font expert.

What would you recommend in favor of point sizes?

1em ?


--
- Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies
tina (AT) greytower (DOT) net http://www.greytower.net/
[+46] 0708 557 905

On Tue, Aug 19, Tina Holmboe inscribed on the eternal scroll:

Alan Flavell had a rather good posting on the topic a while ago:

To be fair, Stephen Poley's web page says it better, and comes
complete with a demonstration:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/verdana.html

cheers

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

On Tue, Aug 19, Tina Holmboe inscribed on the eternal scroll:

Alan Flavell had a rather good posting on the topic a while ago:

To be fair, Stephen Poley's web page says it better, and comes
complete with a demonstration:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/verdana.html

In regard to this last paragraph:

Incidentally it is sometimes said that using Verdana in a user stylesheet
is sound, but even this is doubtful: an inoffensive author style
specification like font-family: serif; font-size: 100% will leave you with
text that is too small.

Is there something I have missed in the CSS spec that disallows or
discourages a user agent from simply not honoring font-family properties
for a given generic font family (serif, sans-serif, etc.)? I would think
that this would be a handy browser feature for some people.

(Not that I'm a huge fan of Verdana myself; I have somewhat of a liking for
the Bitstream Vera fonts, Utopia, and sometimes Lucida Sans and Lucida
Typewriter. To me, Verdana by comparison to something like Bitstream Vera
Sans just looks sort of... ghastly.)

--
Shawn K. Quinn

Shawn K. Quinn wrote:

In regard to this last paragraph:

| Incidentally it is sometimes said that using Verdana in a user stylesheet
| is sound, but even this is doubtful: an inoffensive author style
| specification like font-family: serif; font-size: 100% will leave you with
| text that is too small.

Is there something I have missed in the CSS spec that disallows or
discourages a user agent from simply not honoring font-family properties
for a given generic font family (serif, sans-serif, etc.)? I would think
that this would be a handy browser feature for some people.

I think what Steven is saying here is that since Verdana renders much
smaller than other fonts of the same size (like Arial) and most pages
are designed without using Verdana (because of just this reason and
others) then using Verdana in your style sheet will have the effect of
your viewing the page with a smaller font size than the designer intended.

e.g. If I designed a footer using Arial with font size 75% and you had a
user style sheet specifying the font Verdana, then when the page is
rendered the footer as Verdana 75% may seem the size of something like
(wild guess here - you get the idea) Arial 60% and may moreover result
in an unreadable footer.

In general, using Verdana in a style sheet will mean that you are
viewing web pages at a smaller font size than the designer intended -
which in the worst case may make some text illegible.

--Nikolaos