Font Size (Pixel vs. Point) ?

[killua]

Hello folks. I just wanted to know what is better to use when configuring a font size. I read some informations that depending upon what you use, the font size can appear very small or very big between different monitors. I use "point" for our website.

What do you think is the most preferable to use when determining the font size, Pixel or Point? Any ideas?

[Ricoool]

ems and % is better

[1-True-Love.com]

Points are great since they are 1/72 inch tall. You know how tall your text will be. Problem with pixels is that they get smaller the higher the resolution. Pixels are great if you want to wrap text around a background picture. Takes some work but it can make a nice looking page. I have heard that pixels are not resizable in IE - so if they want to increase the font size they can't. Don't use IE, so I can't say. Remember hearing that. EM's leave you at the mercy of how the person has that defined font sizes in their browser. Ems and percentages make it easy. I always use points.

Hope that this helps you.

[Ricoool]

well the hole thing about ems and % is useability, so the user can sacle the text

[killua]

Thank you very much for your suggestions. I see that Points are actually better (so that's what I'll use). ems and percentage seems to be harder to implement.

[Jason]

Points are the best

[evilregis]

No, points are not the best. To anyone who finds this thread, forget that you ever read that. This is a web design forum. For displaying pages on screen media. Points are included in CSS solely for the purpose of print design. For print media stylesheets. They are not scalable as % and ems are. If you are any sort of web designer you should be working to make your pages accessible and using points is a strike against that right off the top.

Originally Posted by 1-true-love.com

EM's leave you at the mercy of how the person has that defined font sizes in their browser.

A user sets the text size of their browser to one that they find legible. By going and setting a font size using points or pixels to anything smaller than that then that page becomes unreadable and inaccessible. Forcing them to read text that could be drastically smaller than what they are capable of reading is ridiculous and should not be encouraged.

[Ricoool]

way to go evilregis

[1-True-Love.com]

Originally Posted by evilregis

Points .... They are not scalable as % and ems are.

Since when? All of my pages that use points and they scale just fine. It is the pixels that do not scale as "%" and ems.

Forcing them to read text that could be drastically smaller than what they are capable of reading is ridiculous and should not be encouraged.

No one is talking about forcing anybody to read small print. I know a canadian who designs websites in 5,8 and 10 PX font sizes. Talk about hard to read.

Have a nice day all.

[evilregis]

Originally Posted by 1-True-Love.com

Since when? All of my pages that use points and they scale just fine.

Since, umm... let me check. Yep, for forever. It's funny because your website (which is currently showing many broken images for me and centered in firefox, but not in IE) does not scale in IE whatsoever so I don't know who designed your page, but apparently it wasn't you. It will scale in Firefox, as it also scales pixel defined fonts, IE is dead in the water with points.

From the w3c: (emphasis mine)

• Do not specify the font-size in pt, or other absolute length units. They render inconsistently across platforms and can't be resized by the User Agent (e.g browser).

[1-True-Love.com]

Thanks for the information.

[1-True-Love.com]

Where are the broken images?

[1-True-Love.com]

,If you download the page the images will not show, hotlink protection. Some jerk tried to hijack all my images so the hotlink protection.

[evilregis]

Here's a screenshot for you, in IE. They're showing broken for me in FF and Opera as well.

screenshot