Jared Stein wrote: > 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,
I don't, but I won't get into that right now - see below. > 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? Personally, I would *not* like it like that. It would mean that when I visit a site and find the line-length too short or too long, I'd widen or narrow my window, only to have zero result, plus seeing my font-size get very large or small. I'd then have to change my font-size in the browser to what I like, then most likely still want to adjust the window width some more, meaning having to adjust the font-size again, and so on. Next I'd surf to a different site, which has a different page setup, and different widths of boxes in it, and I'd have to start over again. Also - have you tried how that system works on a page with a fixed width sidebar and a flexible width content div? AIUI, narrowing the window would make the font-size of the content div smaller, while the font-size of the sidebar stayed intact, meaning that when I adjust my font-size in the browser, the content div will display my preferred font-size, while the sidebar content went too large. Nah, really, can't see any benefit at all of this idea... -- Els http://locusmeus.com/ http://locusoptimus.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d IE7b2 testing hub -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=IE7 List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
