Re: Proposal: font-size: auto

On 06/06/07, David Woolley <forums@david-woolley.me.uk> wrote:
> > Yes.  That's the point. It wouldn't make sense to have width 400px and
> > font-size:auto ad it leaves no way for a browser to calculate a correct
> > font-size.
>
> I had assumed that you were doing a 2D fit.

Ah, now I understand you're concerns.  No, the proposal is just for
the font-size to be based on the width of the element (rather than the
other way around).

> >     This is likely to result in very small fonts
>
> > How so? Just say you have a browser window, which is 1024px across.  If
> > the properties above were applied to the body, the width of the body
> > (including the margins) would be 54em, resulting in a font size of  ~
> > 19px.  At a width of 800px, the font-size would be ~ 15px and at 640px
>  > it would be ~12px.  In the example I provided, the text is actually
>  > more
>
> And with typical PDAs, at 150px, it would be of the order of 3px.  More
> realistically, given the font sizes that seem to be preferred by
> designers, one would start at 7px and reduce to about 1px, i.e. font
> sizes tend to start at the smallest size that is renderable as
> recognizable characters (and assumes good vision on the part of the user!).

Let's run with that though.  Imagine you have no minimum font-size,
then you're right on a 150px PDA, you won't be able to read a thing.
However you will get a very good overview of the page.  Now say the
PDA has a zoom facility (hmm.. kind of like the effect demoed on the
iPhone), then user can zoom in to the bit they are interested in and
start reading.

Cheers,

-- 
Tom Howard
http://windyroad.org

Received on Wednesday, 6 June 2007 07:29:40 UTC