On 2008/02/07 11:43 (GMT-0500) Michael B Allen apparently typed: > The font size in textarea elements on Firefox (on Linux at least) is > about 70% the size of other input and select elements in the same form > whereas in IE the font size is roughly the same across all form > elements. I suspect this has more to do with the fact that textarea > uses a courier font-family and FF preferences specifically use a > smaller font for Courier but of course I have no control over that.
A study using IE of the bottom portion of http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/fonts-face-samplesM.html will reveal what IE does and why FF is set to do as it does, which is to match IE behavior on the M$ platforms. You will see the exact same behavior on a 96 DPI Linux desktop with FF as with IE on doz if you have the M$ fonts installed, select them as the default families, and change the default monospace size from 12 to 13. You can see there that the monospace default Courier New in lower case at 10pt is the closest match in apparent size to the proportional default Times New Roman in lower case at its 12pt default. Courier New is a little wider, but also a bit shorter. Any other size match-up would produce a larger disparity in apparent sizes when proportional is interspersed with monospace. You can also see that IE is using 10pt Courier New in its internal stylesheet for PRE, CODE, TT, SAMP & TEXTAREA, though not for INPUT. FF defaults are set in px. 16px is its proportional default. At 96 DPI, 16px is exactly 12pt, which makes the FF proportional match IE's 12pt default. Also at 96 DPI, 13px is the closest available match to 10pt, which is why FF has monospace set to 13px on M$ & Mac. Once upon a long ago time on Linux, most fonts were bitmap. Back then with the commonly available fonts 12px turned out to be a better match for 10pt than did 13px, and that legacy has held into today, even though bitmap fonts on Linux are all but extinct, besides grossly inferior for use on web pages. > So how does one get the same textarea font size behavior between FF and IE? There are multiple ways: 1-Don't try to change their size or family. Your own http://www.ioplex.com/~miallen/test100.html shows that. 2-Specify only proportional fonts for your textareas. 3-Specify plenty of common known monospace font names for the textareas, but not the generic monospace: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/Tmp/testx.html 4-This is not a *good* idea, because IE<v7 users generally don't know how to change the size you pick to a size that works for them, but set a size in pt. At any given DPI, a pt is a pt is a pt regardless which browser is displaying them. Pt is better than px, because you can feel reasonably assured that a given nominal pt size will remain approximately that same physical size regardless of the actual DPI. Conversely, px are always an unknown size in the absence of knowing actual DPI, and what is a good px size for X DPI is almost assuredly not equally good when the actual DPI is 50% more or less than X DPI. To get an perspective on this latter statement, take a look at http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/SC/sc-micall-monospace1.jpg which is a screenshot of slight variations of Michael's testcases that I consolidated into one page at http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/Tmp/test100sx.html I've saved Michael's testcases separately in two flavors each, once in standards mode and once in quirks mode, so that the differences as a consequence of rendering mode can also be compared: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/Tmp/test.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/Tmp/tests.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/Tmp/test100.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/Tmp/test100s.html -- "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16 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 List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
