RE: [WSG] Question to the others ...

[Bert Doorn]

G'day

 Firstly, what kind of measurement is ex?  

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html#length-units

Relative units are:

em: the 'font-size' of the relevant font 
ex: the 'x-height' of the relevant font 
px: pixels, relative to the viewing device 

I tend to use a mixture of em and px.  Have never used ex but it may have
its uses.

 I have never seen that before. Secondly, how would a 
 fluid width layout work with a faux column like I've
 used?I guess it wouldn't.

Eric Meyer may have a solution.
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2004/09/03/sliding-faux-columns/

My own point of view (purists won't agree but I can live with that): if it's
easily done with a simple, css styled table, why go out on a limb with
complex CSS and background images.  In many cases the difference in download
is minimal, and without the need to download a background image, the
(single, not nested) table approach can be more efficient.  I prefer not to
use background images if all I want is a plain colo(u)r.

 Since the graphic is 780px wide, surely the container has 
 to be 780px wide too.  No?

If the image is presentational only, make it a background (perhaps ironic
given what I said above)  Otherwise you might try specifying its size in
em's so it will scale up/down as appropriate.  780px is too wide for many
people who still run at a resolution of 800x600.  Why annoy them with
horizontal scrollbars?

Regards
--
Bert Doorn, Web Developer
Better Web Design
http://www.betterwebdesign.com.au
Fast-loading, user-friendly websites.


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Re: [WSG] Question to the others ...

[Rob Mientjes]

 em: the 'font-size' of the relevant font

Not totally. An em is the width of (no shit!) an 'M' glyph. But the
rest is allright for me.

-- 
Cheers,
Rob.
» http://www.zooibaai.nl/b/
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Re: [WSG] Question to the others ...

[Jeroen Visser [ vizi ]]

Marilyn Langfeld wrote:
Hi folks,
My first post, since I've worked in print longer than web. In print, an 
em (and en) are mostly used to describe dashes (of the width of M and N) 
in a font. So they are appropriate to the task when used for that. They 
have been slightly redefined for the web (since an en is not always half 
an em).
Hi Marilyn,
To add to your posting: and the capital M or roman m are nowadays not 
really an em or en wide.

An em is a unit of measurement defined as the point size of the 
font12 point type uses a 12 point em. An en is one-half of an em. 
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/emen/
An excellent explanation of the em and en units:
http://css.nu/articles/typograph1-en.html#Ch23
As always, someone has dug up al the idiosyncrasies that made id from 
the physical world to the digital space. :-)

Jeroen
--
vizi fotografie  grafisch ontwerp - http://www.vizi.nl/
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