Re: CSS and absolute sizes

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, Isofarro wrote:

> Nothing wrong with absolute sizes for layout (for example widths, paddings
> and margins), as long as the text is still readable when resized. Most fixed
> width layouts cannot handle textsize being increased, then readability and
> accessibility are affected.

Pardon? Fixed size means fixed size. If you say 10px, it means ten pixels
no matter what. You should not rely on the user's ability to override
something that you have said as something absolute, even though such
possibilities exist.

There are practical reasons to use absolute sizes. To take a simple
example, consider a very thin border for a box. Using the keyword thin as
border-width creates a not so thin a border. Using, say, 0.03em might
create no border at all, since the browser might round it to zero pixels.
So using 1px or 2px might be reasonable. But let's not make it a virtue.
What we would like to have is something that is as thin a possible but
still noticeable with respect to the font size.

For padding, for example, absolute sizes are no-no. Using any fixed amount
of padding is a shot in the dark when the font size may vary as much as it
can.

-- Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Thursday, 27 March 2003 10:17:05 UTC