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RE: Usability and Font Sizes

RE: Usability and Font Sizes

Please, whatever you do, don't use small, large, x-large, etc.! The actual sizes vary from browser to browser what looks normally sized in IE looks microscopic in Mozilla, or vice versa. [The .NET Guy]

Hmm... I just did a quick test. Using the em measurement is identical in both browsers as expected and while the named sizes are not exact, they are very close and are indeed still relative to the browsers text size:

Relative Font Sizes

Published Jul 25 2002, 09:21 AM by drub0y
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Comments

 

Dana Coffey said:

I disagree. Forcing a fixed font size puts vision impaired users at a disadvantage. I set my browser setting to larger fonts because I am experience the classic middle age eye degeneration. It infuriates me when I cannot size up the font size on a page ;).
April 30, 2003 7:39 AM
 

Drew Marsh said:

That's the thing though, they're not fixed. Using the em measurment makes the font relative to your desired size. So if you love large fonts and I specify an em value of 1, the font will be large, but if I specify a value of .8 it will be a little smaller, but larger than if I specified something lile 10px explicitly.
May 1, 2003 7:27 AM

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