On 2007/06/21 13:00 (GMT-0400) Brian Crescimanno apparently typed: > That's a lot of great information arguing in favor of allowing for > complete user control over text size and I'll be the first to say that > I love the concept. However, the difficulty comes in reconciling that > desire with the design at hand.
> Example: I have a fixed width design that is 760px wide That's an arbitrary and artificial constraint. How wide is 760px? Entirely unknown, except in your local environment. Only there can you know how big 760px is and what size text or images work best (for you) within that constraint. Unlike in print, web designs work best for ordinary web users that work entirely in relative dimensions. Luckily, CSS provides nice relative units that are designed to fulfill that purpose. Pixels just aren't one of them. Note that the CSS specs claim px is a relative unit. However, px is relative to the viewing device. That's a relativity that should be irrelevant to designers, since the size of the viewing device and thus the size of a px always bears a completely unknowable relationship to any physical size. In contrast, though an em unit is also a relative unit and we also don't know its actual size outside our own environments, we can reasonably presume it bears a reasonable relationship to the size of a legible or even comfortably sized text character. That means you can size things in em and expect relatively constant relationships between text size & other object sizes and viewport size across a wide range of viewing environments. > and I need to > put 5-tab navigation across the top. There is a finite amount of > space to work with--allowing the text to expand beyond certain limits > ends up breaking your layout. Understand that rational web users will attempt to have settings that provide a rational and functional relationship between physical text size and physical viewport size. You can expect designs to remain useful throughout a range of text sizes that stay within those rational bounds, just as you can expect them to break if text goes irrationally giant or tiny in relation to the size of the viewport. > So does anyone have some suggestions, or perhaps even some URLs to > discuss how to make these two concepts mesh? They can't mesh. Arbitrary constraints cause breakage whenever users find it necessary to go outside your artificial bounds. Discard the notion that the web is anything remotely similar to paper. Embrace that inherent variability by sticking virtually exclusively to relative sizing (for the tiniest dimensioning of margins, paddings & borders, px sizing generally works fine). URLs: Basic concept of relative sizing: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/widths-em-v-px.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/fflinelength.html Simple implementation: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/indexx.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/dlviolin.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/dancesrq.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/ Elaborate implementation: http://cssliquid.com/ -- "Respect everyone." I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d IE7 information -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=IE7 List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
