Re: Columns and other layouts

Coises:
>
>|| 1. If the centered title at the beginning of this page will fit on one
>|| line, it should be shown on one line; if it requires two lines, the
>|| break between lines should be such that the two parts are approximately
>|| equal in horizontal measure.

I think something like

    h1 {padding: auto; min-padding: 1em}

looks pretty much straight forward. I'm not sure it is implementable this
way, though.

>|| 2. The section headings on this page should be distinctly larger than
>|| the paragraph text that follows them, but visibly smaller than the main
>|| page heading.  They should all be the same size.

That's a job for relative font sizes.

>|| Within those constraints, the section heading size should be chosen
>|| so that as many of the headings as possible fit on a single line.

I really don't understand why someone would make such an requirement.

>|| 4. I have three classes of text to set on my web page:
>||      a. Running Text in Paragraphs: this should be of a size that is the
>||         best compromise between being large enough that the user can
>||         read it easily, and small enough to keep from making the user
>||         page down more than necessary.

100%, 1em, (1rem,) medium

>||      b. Section Titles: these should be clearly distinguishable from the
>||         running text, but not so large as to be jarring.  They should be
>||         convenient guides for the skimming reader to find the parts of
>||         the text that are most interesting.

120%, 1.2em, (1.2rem,) larger, large

>||      c. Legal and Technical Notices: these should be as small and
>||         unobtrusive as possible without being illegible.

80%, 0.8em, (0.8rem,) smaller, small

> The problem here is that no useful meanings are assigned to the font-size
> keywords.

The scaling factor is defined to be 1.2 in CSS2, 1.5 in CSS1.

> What the heck does "medium" mean (other than "larger than small
> and smaller than large")?

'Medium' is 100% or 1em of the root element (1rem).

> (And I want it to adjust to the font --- some fonts look huge at, say,
> 12pt, while script fonts may be barely legible at the same size.

You might be able to do some adjustments with @font-face and/or
font-size-adjust.

> What I'd like to see here is a set of font-size keywords that have
> normative meanings related to their use in page design.  For example:

Similar to "font: icon" etc., but only for font-size?
It would probably be nice to be able to set minimum sizes in the browser,
instead of relying on a fixed minmimum font size (possible in Opera).

Received on Tuesday, 29 April 2003 15:18:33 UTC