Re: Length unit relative to media width

David Woolley wrote:

>I would say that any such unit should be referenced to the viewport
>width; users should not be forced to go full screen.  Even better might
>be to reference it to the calculated value of the width of the containing
>block, making it something like a reciprocal of em; em allows one to
>recover the current calcualted value for the font dimension into the 
>height and width dimensions, whereas this proposal seems a way of
>recovering height and width information into the font size dimension.

Well, only if your intention is that the webpage should scale according to 
the viewport. This might make the content too small to read, and it might 
be better to have the user to choose between useing full size or scrolling.

(If a patter of John Lewis proposal is to be followed, one might also 
include a property like viewport-width:800px;)

>I see no case for more than one such unit.  If the use of fractions is
>undesirable, use something like a milli-width.

Actually not a good Idea. 
One point is that the web-designer should be able to use the pixel sizes 
in the design that corresponds to the screen resolution he actually is useing. 
Also this makes the consept more understandable for users, 
and might avoid confusions. 

(On the other hand, a property screen-width, 
as proposed by John Lewis might be a better approach.)

Gaute Sandvik