Re: Can cascading work?

Bill,
I started out trying to make sure all font-sizes for elements were relative
to each other but ran into a big problem with MSIE. While it does allow the
user to increase and decrease the font-size, the implementation is broken.
MSIE uses the percentage of the default size for headings and not the
percentage of the parent element. So it's useless until it's fixed in the
most popular browsers. I went back to specifying all fonts in points. Also,
you have to base the relative font-sizes on something, so you have to
specify at least a basefont in points on the body elements. Then the user's
OS settings will come into play.

The percentage is small. And likely to remain so because the uneducated
will copy point sizes from their Word templates etc. and because the
educated are currently crippled by poor implementations of CSS by the
"major" browsers. It's also a small chore to translate the traditional
point sizes to percentages.

Steve

>  This will really only help with well-written author stylesheets.  I
>haven't done a sampling, but if anybody has, I'd be interested in the
>percentage of sheets that actually _use_ relative font sizing versus the 'I
>want this 26pt, dammit' philosophy.
>
>  The default stylesheet in Emacs/W3 uses relative font sizing specifically
>so I don't go too far from what the user wants as their default Emacs font
>anyway.
>
>-Bill P.
>
>
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   _/ Steve Knoblock
   _/ City Gallery - History of Photography http://www.webcom.com/cityg
   _/ Member NSA http://www.3d-web.com/nsa/sw.html

Received on Monday, 28 April 1997 05:05:16 UTC