[plug] [OT] linmagau got slashdotted!

[Craig Ringer]

> Is anyone else having this issue when viewing the mag pages ?
> Does anyone have experience with this kind of thing.. ?
> Suggestions ?

Where possible, do not use "px" measurements. "large" "larger" etc are 
good, but tend to be interpreted in varying ways by browsers. "110%" etc 
are ideal IMHO since they RESPECT THE USER'S CHOSEN BASE FONT SIZE. px 
measurements are infuriating for users who use very high DPI screens 
(think 1600x1200 14" LCD), have low-res screens (want to fit more in), 
have poor eyesight or work on computers a /lot/ and like to sit back and 
read comfortably.

When setting leading, kerning, etc (you can do this with CSS, but thank 
god most people don't) always use em or percent, NEVER px or you'll 
break things and badly on browsers + fonts different to yours. Even 
better, don't mess with the leading and kerning, it's 99% of the time 
quite fine how it is.

"em" is an excellent measurement for objects that must scale in 
proportion to text.

Always test your pages with a different browser on a different platform, 
and with fonts set to "bloody huge" and "what, you have a 100x90 
screen?!?" sizes. I'm currently not following this rule too well on 
www.postnewspapers.com.au (which is mostly still HTML 3.2 and really 
ugly, I have to rewrite the templates some time...) but it is important. 
The POST's site does stand up to having fonts scaled to 
2cm-high-character levels fine though (at least under mozilla) so it's 
not doing too badly. The layout doesn't follow the font size changes 
like it should, but it's simple enough not to break badly. That's the 
goal, really.

I'm helped by having a journalist here with /very/ poor eyesight, and 
she'll tell me (often with a cricket bat ;-) ) if there are issues with 
our website.

Craig Ringer