Re: Elements not sizing consistently

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Scripsit Bergamot:

Yet you claimed that em is closer to average character width than ex.

I said no such thing,

You very explicitly did, by saying "No" to my statement to the contrary.

I *explicitly* said that ems had no relationship to character width.
I *never* said that 1em is closer to average character width than 1ex.
I *only* said that ems are a better unit to use due to broken
implementations of ex. How many ems to use are completely up to you.

You read things into what I said that weren't really there.
That's not my problem.

--
Berg

Scripsit Bergamot:

I *explicitly* said that ems had no relationship to character width.

No you didn't. You said no such thing. On the contrary, you said:
"There is no CSS unit that describes character width, but em is the
closest thing there is."

You also claimed:
"Width in em is that number(rotated 90 degrees), which may be
wider or narrow than the widest character depending on the particular
font."
That's rather nonsensical, but what it says at least is that 1em may be
wider or narrower than the widest character, which simply isn't true. As a
matter of practical font design, and centuries-old typographic tradition,
1em is the upper bound for the width, so the "or narrow[er]" part isn't
true.

I *never* said that 1em is closer to average character width than 1ex.

Yes you did, by saying "No" to my statement about 1ex being closer.

I *only* said that ems are a better unit to use due to broken
implementations of ex. How many ems to use are completely up to you.

If it's completely up to me, then ems are not a useful unit at all. What
good does it make to have a unit if the numbers are purely subjective?

But that was your claim. My claim was that on the average, 1ex is much
closer to the width of characters. You haven't done anything to disprove me,
though you seem to disagree with yourself on the meaning and usefulness of
1em in this respect.

The em unit itself has no defined relationship to the width of characters,
and neither has the ex unit. The variation in implementations of the ex unit
is smaller than the variation of the proportion of the em unit to the
average width of characters, so referring to it is not very relevant,
especially when you have been proven to be totally wrong about the em unit,
both in theory and in practice.

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

On Oct 23, 4:28 pm, "Roy A." <royarnes... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

NO. The validator is correct. According to the DTD, form controls can
occur outside a form element.

Thank you. I figured that the validator probably knew what it was
talking about :-)

Thanks for everyone's help, I now have the page looking the way I want
it to in all the browsers I listed above. The HTML (now including a
form element!) is accepted by the validator too.

Chris

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

The point is that if you want something to
be 42 characters wide, in the average, then 42ex is far better than 42em.

Bergamot <bergamot (AT) visi (DOT) com> wrote:

No, 21em is better than 42ex.

ex is a useless unit until at least IE and gecko get comparable results.
You apparently disagree, but that's your prerogative.

If 42ex gives better results in more capable browsers, then why would I use
21em and thus reduce everyone to the level of the less capable browsers?
--
Darin McGrew, mcgrew (AT) stanfordalumni (DOT) org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, darin (AT) htmlhelp (DOT) com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"Red meat isn't bad for you. Fuzzy blue-green meat is bad for you."