Felix Miata wrote:
> On 2009/01/04 00:54 (GMT) Thom Brown composed:
>
>> I've applied the following to a paragraph and notice that while it
>> correctly applies in Firefox, it won't apply any size changes in
>> IE7/8.
My observations are different. This may depend on the platform. (I'm using
Vista.)
>> font-family: Courier;
>> font-size: 0.8em;
>
>> I've tried using a font-size of 0.4em and 0.2em, which shows changes
>> in Firefox but not IE. If I use Courier New as the font it works
>> fine. It does seem to apply changes if it's above 1em though.
Well, then "won't apply any size changes" was not correct, was it? But on my
IE 7, font size changes take place for 0.8em, too. There's surely something
odd (in addition to Courier being an odd font, that is). If I don't set body
font size, the change is visible. If I set it to 10pt, there is no change in
font size even in a drastic case like
T<a style="font-size:0.4em">T</a>
but if I use the IE 7 zoom function, zooming e.g. to 400%, the change
becomes visible and roughly as expected.
Actually, on Firefox 3, the behavior seems to be the same. My conjecture is
that there is a lower limit for physical (actual) font size for Courier,
independently of browser settings. Something like 10pt, it seems. To me,
this makes sense, since Courier is difficult to read in that size, and going
below that would be rather absurd.
> I'm not sure how Firefox is able to do it unless at the smaller sizes
> it's substituting Courier New or whatever its prefs are set to for
> monospace. What are SeaMonkey, Opera & Safari doing?
A browser could algorithmically scale the characters down. That would give
poor results, but it's _possible_. Opera seems to behave the same way as IE
and Firefox, whereas Google Chrome really scales down... but the results
look the same as using Courier New, and it apparently just reads Courier as
Courier New.
> Courier on Windows is a bitmap font available in a very limited
> selection of sizes.
It's apparently better to use other monospace fonts. The choice between them
is largely a matter of taste, but it is important to consider how well the
monospace font lives along with the copy text font, especially when used
inline. For example, mixing a sans-serif font like Arial with a serifed
monospace like Courier New does not look good.
Moreover, especially if you use the so-called C fonts as the primary font
suggestion, beware that browsers typically use something like font-size: 90%
for elements they render in monospace font by default. This is probably
supposed to help with bulks of text in monospace font, like program
listings, but it tends to become a problem for inline monospace text: it
looks too small as compared with surrounding text.
Consider e.g. text like
The <code>print</code> command.
It looks bad in many combinations but rather harmonic if you set
body { font-family: Cambria; }
code { font-family: Consolas; }
code { font-size: 100%; }
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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