11 ms·
#5 is a flaw in IE, not a web design mistake. Edit (since my original brusqueness earned a downvote): The flaw is that IE6 cannot resize text sized in pixels.
by bouncingsoul 18y ago
#5 is a flaw in IE, not a web design mistake.
Edit (since my original brusqueness earned a downvote):
The flaw is that IE6 cannot resize text sized in pixels. IE7 fixed this with its new zoom feature, but left the old, broken resize method untouched. Every other modern browser can resize pixel-sized text.
I personally prefer sizing text in pixels because browsers handle ems and percents differently. Usually it works out fine, but it's really annoying to futz with fractions of an em because one browser rounded it up while others rounded it down.
Pixels also make the translation from mockups to code a tad easier.
- puns 18y agoIndeed — and it's almost irrelevant now anyway as IE6 is dying off.
- nuclear_eclipse 18y agoYou/we wish...
- dominik 18y agoIt's falling, but not that quickly. IE6 still has 25.3% market share: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
- whatusername 18y agoAnd of course: "W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to use Internet Explorer, since it comes preinstalled with Windows. Most do not seek out other browsers. These facts indicate that the browser figures above are not 100% realistic. Other web sites have statistics showing that Internet Explorer is used by at least 80% of the users."
- makecheck 18y agoNo, I've seen plenty of sites that go to great effort to choose a font size (something that should be a user preference / fluid layout). It is very aggravating on large displays, or for people with imperfect vision.
- bouncingsoul 18y agoWhy is specifying a font size wrong?
- shaunxcode 18y ago"It is very aggravating on large displays, or for people with imperfect vision"
- bouncingsoul 18y agoBut not specifying a font size is annoying to people with average resolution displays and good vision because the default size (16px) is too large. But I understand now how makecheck could get annoyed: though pixels can be resized after page load, ems and percents take the browser's font size setting into account and are scaled appropriately the first time.
- wmf 18y agoIt's possible for the user to change browser settings; I have mine set to 14pt. Should a Web designer assume that the user has configured the browser to their liking or not? Should this assumption depend on what decade it is?
- tel 18y agoIt's more complex than just enabling font scaling. Many designs are not tested after fonts have been scaled causing breakages which render the page illegible. Additionally, for those shooting for the greatest cross-browser accessibility, different browsers scale differently based upon whether you define things in pixels, points, percentages, or ems.