Folks, let me propose a scenario to you and get your ideas on how 
useful/useless you would find it.

As you know CSS 2 allows absolute and relative font sizing. Of course relative 
refers to the font size of the parent element, but I've often found myself 
pining for the ability to use a ratio relative to the size of the parent 
element itself rather than the parent's font table.  This is primarily because 
while I love the concept of liquid designs, such layouts often fail in terms of 
usability when long-ish text blocks run longer than the print-standard of 50-70 
characters per line.  A fixed width design is significantly weaked by high-res 
displays, which makes a forced standard line length too often too small.  An 
em/ex-based design width is OK, but requires the user to adjust the type size 
manually.  

If one accepts this as a legitimate problem, it seems to me the most obvious 
solution would be to provide a method of basing the current em space not on the 
parent element's em space, but on a percentage of the parent element's width. 
If dynamic, this would change the font size based on the width of the element 
particular to each user, but would still allow for the user to override the 
page's display with their own +/- adjustments.

My colleague and I have been playing with this concept, and implementation is 
possible and pretty straight-forward with a little Javascript, but I wonder if 
such stuff would be of interest to anyone else?

Jared Stein

   Director of Learning Media Development
   Distance Education, Utah Valley State College, MS 149
   http://www.uvsc.edu/disted/

   phone:  (801) 863 8929
   office:   Learning Center 221d

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