Hi Ben,
Welcome to the group! You comment is true - in relation to Win/IE.
Theoretically, ems and percents are exactly the same and SHOULD operate in
the same way on all browsers, However, to quote CSS-discuss wiki:
<quote>
A word of caution concerning IE. Be careful using ems. The most recent
versions of IE for Windows tend to flummox text with a font-size less than
1em ("0.5em", for instance). Percentages tend to work more predictably, and
(for who knows what reason) are usually more accurate (possibly rounding
errors?) than their em equivalents. Please note that this applies only to
the font-size (FontSize ) and line-height (LineHeight ) properties. All
other properties for which ems are suitable (margins, padding, width and
height, among others) are not so for percentages, since the latter are
calculated according to the dimensions of parent elements.
</quote>
So, we (Peter, Rose and I) tend to use percents for font sizing - as they
are more predictable across browsers.
Russ
>> "Relative font sizes and the cascade"
>> http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/relative/
>
> I have seen a weird difference between 'em's and % in IE/Win. If you get the
> browser "Text size" at medium they seem to work the same (e.g. 80% is 0.8em,
> 1.5em is 150% etc), but if you change the text size up or down the
> consistency ends fast.
>
> Percentages and ems seem to scale differently. It appears to my humble eye
> that font sizes specified in ems get compounded, "largest" and "smallest"
> being quite significantly different sizes when compared with the same
> measurement specified with %.
>
> That is.. I assume I am testing the "same measurement". I had assumed
> "0.8em" would be the same as "80%" but perhaps that's incorrect? Anyone know
> anything about this?
>
> cheers
> Ben
>
> ps: hi everyone! :)
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