2009/7/7 designer <desig...@gwelanmor-internet.co.uk>: > I've been reading (and trying to learn from) the discussions on > accessibility and particularly font size. I have never had any success at > using ways other than pixels. When I read: > > http://informationarchitects.jp/100e2r/?v=4 > > I agreed with the author that the text size looked OK (he uses Georgia), so > I tried knocking up a simple test/template and I found that Verdana 'looks' > much bigger than Georgia, and Arial slightly smaller than Georgia. I also > found that firefox was different to Safara, these two in turn being > different to IE and Opera. IE7 looked huge and clumsy! See for yourself: > > http://www.betasite.fsnet.co.uk/gam/fontstyle.html > > So, whilst the idea of text at 100% sounds reasonable, I always get a mixed > bag of results. I feel as a designer(suggester), that I cannot possibly > allow something I've done to look laughably clumsy in some browsers. > Contrary to the idea that users want to choose there own settings, my > experience is that very very few even know they can do it, let alone want to > be bothered! Is there a way around this, which provides a more consistent > interface AND maintains user choice for those who want it? >
Different fonts have different sized letter forms; _of course_ they look different. Look up x-height <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-height> for starters. Verdana not only has a larger x-height than Georgia or Arial, it also has wider letters; that is why the Verdana sample occupies seven lines, while the Georgia and Arial samples only occupy six. Using the MeasureIt plugin for Firefox, I find that six lines occupies exactly the same amount of vertical space in all three fonts, which is what one would expect given that they have the same font-size and line-height. It's just that Verdana doesn't fit as many letters into the same space widthways, and so runs on to an extra line. If you expect all typefaces to occupy the exact same space letter-for-letter then you're going to have to turn your back on hundreds of years of typographical history. Using only monospaced fonts will give roughly the effect you desire ;-) Regards, Nick. -- Nick Fitzsimons http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/ ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *******************************************************************
