Re: css font question - css purpose

At 15:27 03/08/02 -0400, Thomas Rumley wrote:
>The px measurement for a font (thought I forgot what I was talking about 
>didn't you :P) *should* be hard to override. If you, the user that is, do 
>not want to pay attention to the artistic effort of the designer, turn 
>your css off. You'll be left with only the content for your page and it 
>will display exactly as your browser's settings dictate.

By giving the font a fixed (or difficult to change) size you are removing 
one of the key advantages of the web: flexibility.

Yes, you could disable stylesheets and get a vanilla page, but then you are 
losing the advantages that graphic design can provide. By giving your pages 
a distinct look and feel - assuming it is a useable look and feel - you can 
enhance the useability of the page.

Take print books for example. O'Reilly books have a famous look and feel 
that is consistent across most of their range. Over time I (and other geeks 
too) have come to associate that look and feel with the quality that 
O'Reilly provides. If all books looked the same that distinct advantage 
would be lost. It would be mad, for example, to publish children's books 
and computer manuals in an identical format.

Instead of asking "Why shouldn't I use px" ask "Why should I use px?" What 
are the advantages of px, and what are the disadvantages?[1] I have never 
encountered a way of presenting information that had to display text on a 
computer screen at a specific size[2], and I've encountered several where a 
fixed size cause problems.[3]

Andrew

--
http://aamcf.co.uk/

[1] Consistency of display across platforms is not an advantage, but I'll 
talk about that another time.

[2] I have been asked to fix websites that have seriously flawed designs 
and require text to be a specific, fixed, size. Ideally I would like to 
have taken the time to get these to work properly, but clients rarely want 
to pay to fix something like that.

[3] I used to use an accountancy package where if your font settings on 
Windows were anything other than "Small Fonts" it didn't display the 
correct numbers on the screen....

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