Re: WIDTH measurement units for wide-screen monitors

webmaster wrote:
> The <width> statement does not take em measurements in <body>, <table>,
> and <all listings>, if not others.

There is no <width> element in HTML, and no width attribute takes
anything that isn't a pixel based integer or a percentage - but that is
what CSS is for.

IE has bugs with styling body elements (which can be worked around), the
default table-layout model can ignore the width (but that can be changed).

> Imagine reading a newspaper that has only one column with every
> paragraph splashed over the entire page width.
> 
> That would look terrible, would you agree?  That is what happens with
> these new wide-screen 16:9 monitors .

Only if a width isn't specified in the stylesheet and the user maximised
their browser window.

> When switching from 1024x768 resolution to 1280x1024 resolution the
> fonts look better, but are much smaller – still hard to read.

So adjust the font size preference in the browser.

> To rectify, one switches from 96 DPI to 120 DPI.  Now everything looks
> normal again, but with the better resolution.

Hopefully one would switch to the actual DPI of the monitor rather then
using one of those values if they don't match.

> This solves one problem but creates another. Now all the formatting is
> haywire!

Only on badly styled webpages.

> The way to get around this dilemma is to give all measurements in em
> units because that automatically adjusts for the DPI.

No, it doesn't. Em units adjust based on the font size, not the DPI of
the screen.

> The problem is that only <p> accepts the em units.

Not true.

> Nothing is constraint by body sizing since <body> does not recognize em units. 

Not true. IE has bugs with setting the width of the body, but that is
easy to work around by using a div element as a child of it and ancestor
of the content.

> Neither do <table> 

Not true, but see my above comments about table-layout

> and all forms of listings, such as <ul>, <ol>, and <li>.

I don't know any browser that has problems setting the width of list
elements.

What does this have to do with the W3C Validator Service?

-- 
David Dorward                               <http://dorward.me.uk/>

Received on Friday, 6 March 2009 20:07:44 UTC