Re: Question

by "Paul Wilson" <webgooru(at)gte.net>
Date:	Wed, 16 Feb 2000 10:01:28 -0500
To:	<rsimmons8(at)earthlink.net>, "html" <hwg-basics(at)hwg.org>
References:	hotmail earthlink
	todo: View Thread, Original
I was watching this particular thread with interest.  I worked on the CSS
thing for over six months off and on before I got something to work right.
I eventually found a good piece of code for an external .CSS file that
seemed to work OK.  After liberating this code I started making it better
from experimentation and reading up on the subject. Everyone was talking
about  .CSS and complaining, but few seemed to be able to get it working
right.

I have two basic formats, one using a group of sans serif type fonts for
standard web pages, and one with serif fonts which seem to work better for
CGI forms. More on that later.

After playing with sizes a lot, I discovered that if you want to work with
different sizes, that you could get away with making things larger, but not
smaller.  Part of this is that the browsers did not handle it well, but the
other part is that PC monitors and video cards stink when it comes to
resolution. By going slightly larger, I was allowed to have different size
fonts for effect AND improve viewing ability.  I found you need to keep
everything bigger than 10pts.

Another problem is ultra-large sizes, many of us today have 15", 17" and
even larger monitors.  Ever see an <H1> header in something like Verdana on
a large monitor? Even at 800 X 600 the outside edges get so ragged its very
hard to look at.  Use .CSS to make it smaller.  The search engines that use
header tags for indexing are still happy, and your page looks good because
your .CSS file downsized the header in your web page to a viewable size.  I
always thought H1 was too huge. But some search engines dote on headers
so....

Much reading on this issue from technical magazines brings to light that
smaller serif fonts are trashed because the monitors don't have enough
resolution to show the serif portions of the letters at smaller point sizes.
Hence my preference for sans serifs, they look cleaner and are easier to
read.  But they have to include the following fonts:

BODY {
   font-style : normal;
   font-size : 11pt;
   font-family : Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
   color : #Black;
   margin-top : 0;
   margin-left : 0;
}

This allows it to display on all .CSS capable browsers.  So how do you
handle the other browsers?  Simple, do the design without the external .CSS
file. When finished, add the call to the external .CSS to the <HEAD> and
view it in several browsers, to see the effect of your style sheet. If it
still looks good, its ready to publish.

Why do I like serif fonts for FORMs?  They are easier to space out evenly
for drop-downs and repeating lines of similar information.

As for making modifications, I found Notepad worked well if I knew what I
was doing, but TopStyle allowed me to easily make changes, see what they
would look like in TopStyle AND quickly see what it looked like in the page
I was working with. This program does it all.  My only problem is the guilt
from not registering it yet.    ;-}

Paul


> I use a Mac, too, and ran into this problem (CSS and fonts too small to
> read) this morning. I didn't realize I could turn off CSS and changing
> font sizes in Netscape prefs did NOT change the small CSS fonts - some
> larger fonts yes, small no. Basically, I could not read the site. I
> haven't gone back with CSS off, but I will just to see if that allows me
> to increase the fonts. Curiously, when I changed my screen resolution,
> the small fonts were bigger but still hard to read! They were all messed
> up.
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