- From: Mike Brown <mike@signify.co.nz>
- Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 13:15:13 +1300
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Geoffrey> One thing I noticed in my own development is that (this only seems to affect Geoffrey> MS Internet Explorer) if you encode the font sizes in your page using Geoffrey> percentages, the ability to resize the text on-the-fly (view -> text size -> Geoffrey> smallest, smaller, medium, larger, largest) is "dampened"; whereas if you Geoffrey> encode font sizes using ems, the ability to resize text on-the-fly is Geoffrey> "amplified". Although most online typography resources seem to indicate Geoffrey> that ems are the preferred size unit, it's apparent that this can be used to Geoffrey> advantage for certain purposes... <snip> Geoffrey> I discovered this while performing a variety of tests. Perhaps you did also Geoffrey> - but thought I'd pass along the info just in case. In my case, I had Geoffrey> programmed a web page using ems, but IE allowed the font to be scaled down Geoffrey> so far as to be useless, and so huge that the design was destroyed. After Geoffrey> some tweaking using % shrunk the zoom range and allowed some alteration by Geoffrey> the user and preserved the site design. Geoffrey Just as a quick answer to solving *this* problem with IE, (there's apparently a lot more problems :) if you set the size of the font as % within body, and use ems elsewhere, then IE only shrinks text down to a certain level under (view -> text size -> smallest). So, allowing that you don't make the body size % too small, you can use ems and not have this problem with IE. As an example, and purely just for this!, our site: http://www.signify.co.nz uses "font-size: 76%;" within the body and ems for all other sizings. Reducing text size in IE to "smallest" still allows me to read the text - albeit that it is small. Whereas in Jim's example that you referred to, I couldn't read anything. Apparently this is just one of those features of IE! Regards Mike Brown SIGNIFY :: the logic behind web: http://www.signify.co.nz ph: +64 4 803-3211 | fax: +64 4 803-3241 mob: +64 0274 885-992 PO Box 24-068, Manners St, Wellington Level 8, CMC Building, 89 Courtenay Pl, Wellington
Received on Tuesday, 3 February 2004 19:10:38 UTC