Measuring in Pixels

This is kind of hypothetical, but it crossed my mind this morning.  

When you measure something, you stick to one type of unit.  Be it inches or
centimeters.  You don't mix the two, because it's not logical.

So why is it that we mix them on the web?  We set our screen resolution to
pixels.  Yet we have all of these other measurements such as points, ems and
percentages that screw things up.

We're mixing measurements, which you don't do in any other line of work.
Personally, it would be great if we could say our monitor was to appear in
ems, rather than pixels, but that's not how it works.  What I'm getting at
is wouldn't it be better if browsers just used pixel measurements?

Instead of IE giving keyword choices, what if it gave you the choice of
pixel sizes such as 800x600, which could then resize everything inside of
the browser window?  This is how Opera works, right?  Seems to me this would
eliminate a lot of confusion for developers, and make users happy too.

I should note that I have not read the User Agent Accessiblity Guidelines.

Randal Rust
Covansys, Inc.
Columbus, OH

Received on Monday, 11 March 2002 12:39:04 UTC