Which standard exactly prohibits use of px as font-size unit?
WCAG 1.0, checkpoint 3.4 http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#tech-relative-units
(although there have been discussions recently on the WAI-IG list about whether or not some of these have now been overtaken by technology, the fact remains that IE gets it wrong, not allowing px to resize, and thus web authors should use interim solutions - in this case, not using pixel fonts - to work around the problem http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-interim-accessibility )
Why not? I can change it (except for graphical menu and absolutely illegible trademark notice). The only browser which does not allow it is IE for Windows That's it. (yes, I can hear your "it is the most popular and user by 7/8/9-ty percents of the web surfers. Anyway, 1/2/3-ty percent of users CAN change font size in browser. Maybe 0.1% wants to... maybe 0.01% knows how).
Saying "the percentage of IE users that will resize the font is low" is obviously not the same as saying "the percentage of IE users that will resize the font is low, so I'll just make it impossible for them to do so".
> > To be more precise: what percentage of unfortunate web surfers knows > that it is possible to change font size. > And then what percentage of those uses font-changing tools instead of > using glasses. >
If I set my display to 1024x768, but with large fonts in Windows, the pixel size doesn't change. If a site author now specifies a lovely 9px font, because they're designers and they love their lovely minimal type, then I can't resize it. I shouldn't need to use glasses, a screen magnifier, or even go as far as having to change my screen resolution. Period. Yes, it's a shortcoming of IE, but it's a real world problem which can be fixed in such a simple way...
I do not think this issue deserves as much attention as it gets now.
I don't think it's getting that much attention, but seeing as it is such a trivial thing to do, I'm still amazed at the number of sites that use pixel sizing for fonts.
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