Re: User Agents Do Not Implement Absolute Length Units, Places Responsive Design in Jeopardy

Yes, I know that this is from almost a year ago, ...:

Felix Miata wrote:
> ...
 > IOW, author/designers are _never_ in position to choose the
>optimal base sizing unit for anywhere but the displays they're viewing.
>
> What standards should be pushing for is for authors for the vast majority
> of pages to choose only proportions among object sizes without regard to
>absolute size, and for the users of the user agents to choose the
>appropriate base sizes for each's own environment. ...
>
> The dominant text size on virtually every page should be 1rem. Virtually
>everything that needs to be some other size should be sized as some multiple
>or fraction of that user-defined base size. Authors get to choose
>proportions. Users get to define the actual sizes that those proportions
>produce as displayed results, ....
> ...
> Were this to take place, user agents would actually become agents of users,
>rather than tools used by authors to make the web unnecessarily difficult
>for ordinary and mildly challenged users to actually use. The built-in
>adaptability of user agents encompasses the inherent advantage of the web
>over print, which most unfortunately remains little more than a potential
>advantage ever since CSS1 and its px unit were unleashed.

... but, as a web user who is frequently frustrated by tiny text (from
pages/authors who tell _my_ browser to make that text smaller than _I_
already chose), I want to give that a big "Amen!"

Daniel

Received on Thursday, 4 October 2012 20:49:05 UTC