On Jun 11, 2010, at 2:28 AM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote: > Browsers indeed generally have specific font-size and font-family defaults > for text input fields. Conceptually, such defaults are rules in browser's > default style sheet (in reasonably modern browsers), thus preventing any > inheritance.
Correct. Opera, Gecko and WebKit at least have rules in their UA stylesheet that set font-family and font-size to match the OS defaults for such widgets (and OS defaults mean: how those widgets appear in the OS chrome: dialogue boxes, preference panes, etc). I'm not 100% sure about IE (8), but I think it does the same. > Moreover, as the default font family is often something odd like Microsoft > Sans Serif, typically deviating from the page's general appearance, and the > default font size tends to be smaller than copy text size, the conclusion is > appropriate. > > Moreover, multi-line text input fields (textarea elements) tend to have > similar defaults, except that the default font family is usually monospace. > Since there is seldom any good reason to use monospace font there, I'd > recommend setting font-size and font-family for textarea as well. Those 2 conclusions are not so straight forward. There are good reasons, from UI and interaction perspective, why browsers style those widgets to match OS default. (there is nothing more ugly than seeing a select drop down widget styled with a serif font on OS X… other form controls don't do much better with similar styling). Philippe --- Philippe Wittenbergh http://l-c-n.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [[email protected]] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
