Michael Wilson wrote Fri, 20 May 2005 18:17:15 -0400: > Felix Miata wrote: > > Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
> >>And from that sample, how many of those users know how to change the > >>default size of the text displayed in their browser? > > I'm at a loss to think of any reason how an answer to this might be > > relevant to choosing whether to respect visitors' settings. > If the visitor hasn't created a setting, there is no visitor setting to > disrespect. The browser default isn't a user choice; it's just a random > setting the browser developer thought was the best choice... much like a > font-size deceleration within a stylesheet. Browser defaults are anything but random, unless you want to trace the history all the way back to the invention of the typewriter and standardization of pica type. Pica type is 12pt. 12pt is what every PC wordprocessor I've been exposed to has defaulted to since way back into the 80's or before. Gecko has purposely made the decision to initially default to being highly IE compatible (http://tinyurl.com/755cr & http://tinyurl.com/9jda5 & many references they point to describe getting there and why.) Why IE is why it is probably isn't well documented on the web, probably first because its heritage predates considerably the web as we know it, but also because the answer is rather obvious. Windoze was designed to be WYSIWYG, including what happens when you print. So, IE adopted the same default font size as the well-known word processing programs, a size that allows what you see on screen to fit on standard 8.5" X 11" (and A4) typewriter paper - 12pt - and display at the same size in the wordprocessors as in the browser. That size was physically bigger on screen than on paper for several reasons, not the least of which was the dismal actual default resolution available by default when Win95 was developed, for the common 14" VGA displays of the time and standard 640 X 480 resolution, 61.5 DPI, or at "high" 1024 X 768 XGA resolution, 98.5 DPI. (http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/dpi.html) The technology just wasn't there then to make anything much smaller than 12pt the same physical size on screen as on paper while remaining legible on screen. It takes 9px minimum size to guarantee sufficient pixels (81, including the border, on which most are nearly always unused) in a character box to produce each character in typical onscreen character sets legibly. So to get a reasonable range of available sizes smaller than the default, an artificially high logical DPI had to be presumed, and thus was born 96 for "normal" (at the time, "small") fonts, exactly 25% bigger than the 72 DPI pt standard, resulting in 12pt equating to the 16px we still have today. -- "Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made." John 1:3 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
