Comments on: Reminder: Cross browser font sizes

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:38:14 +0000

@eric: Good to hear that you keep pushing the limits, striving for pixel-perfect designs. From what I hear, very few interface developers have the stamina to keep trying to get pixel-perfect designs to work. I have stopped long time ago, and instead try to determine whether or not the differences destroy the design or not. Works well for me.

By: eric

eric — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:13:01 +0000

I don’t doubt that a lot of people have found these techniques useful. But I’ve yet to get any of them to work. I’ve even been able to demonstrate that, at least in Firefox 3 and Safari 3 on my Mac and with regard to typography only, 1px is equal to about 1.2px. (No, that’s not a typo.)

So I continue to scour the net for a technique that will allow me to reliably take a designer’s pixel- or point-based size and render it in — well, anything. I’d settle for bloody pixels, if they worked. They don’t. (They never have, actually. I proved it eight years ago by doing screenshots in IE, Netscape and Opera across different system font sizes and screen resolutions. Pixels were the least consistent of the three methods I tried (points, percentage and pixels). Pixels weren’t pixels then, either, it just wasn’t as crazy as it is now.)

I’m sure you all think I’m a crank by now, but the thing is, I’ve been driven a little insane by all of this.

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By: Marko

Marko — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:10:52 +0000

I use 62.5% in body which sets font to 10px and than I can use ems, like 1.2em is equal 12px.
I am not sure if this is best way but works fine for me.

By: Dork

Dork — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:40:22 +0000

How about Yahoo fonts.css

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/fonts/

By: zcorpan

zcorpan — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 00:09:55 +0000

When I want consistent results, I mostly use %, pretend that the base font size is 16px, and use my calculator to get the right sizes. If I want to change the font size from 16px to 14px, I calculate 14/16 = 87.5%. If I then want to change the font size from 14px to 12px, that gets 12/14 ? 85.7143%. It seems to work quite well as far as I can tell.

By: Joel Birch

Joel Birch — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 12:59:07 +0000

I use the “bulletproof” method as recommended by Dan Cedarholm (base keyword then percentage) and have had great results. I have never experienced a problem with Opera either. The only drawback is having to give IE5.x one size smaller keyword.
I often wonder why this method is rarely mentioned in these discussions.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 23:08:16 +0000

@Jesper: I would say that it’s a good thing because Owen tested in in that many browsers and saw that it works rather than that Meyer uses it. But I agree with your point there :)

By: Jesper Rønn-Jensen

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 20:42:59 +0000

This is exactly what Eric Meyer does on his blog http://www.meyerweb.com, and the reason I’ve used it a lot for the last couple of years.

My rationale: If Eric Meyer uses it, there is probably a reason as to why it’s put in that way.

Thanks for pointing me to Owen Brigg.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:33:34 +0000

Ok, I accidentally deleted this article, in effect deleting all comments. Sorry people :(

(I was able to restore it from another open tab but the comments are gone)