Barring browser weirdness for a brief utopian moment, is this the way it is supposed to work.?
In order for any text to appear, someone somewhere has to have chosen a font face and size. So choosing to use relative rather than absolute units for font size moves where the decision occurs.
Precisely. This also is the reason why 'px' is the worst unit to define font size in, as Internet Explorer still cannot increase or decrease the size of fonts set in pixels. Common accessibility and usability practice is to allow visitors the freedom to adapt font sizing to their personal preferences.
If the stylesheet belonging to the page uses an absolute unit like pt to set the size of the base font, the browser will attempt to use the page's stylesheet to set the default font size.
The specified author stylesheet will almost always be used; only an !important in a user or browser stylesheet will override this. See:
<http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/css/topics/cascade.htm>
If the stylesheet belonging to the page instead uses the relative unit % or ems to set the size of the base font, then the browser will set the default font size relative to the local machine's default stylesheet's font size. Here 1 em behaves the same way as 100%.
What happens is that instead of forcing an absolute reference font size (in px or pt), you take the user's font size as the basic type size..
If the stylesheet belonging to the page instead uses the relative unit px to set the size of the base font, then the browser will set the default font size relative to the local machine's resolution.
Pixels are not a relative unit; they're as absolute for screen rendering as point sizes are for the printing press.
If the remainder of the font-sizes in the stylesheet are set with relative units, the page should retain the size relationships of the page's stylesheet no matter where the decision about default font size occurs.
Unless the user declares he wants to see h1 elements at 400% of the base font size. ;-)
Jeroen
-- vizi fotografie & grafisch ontwerp - http://www.vizi.nl/
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