[plug] Web Browser Visualisation

[Craig Ringer]

Cameron Patrick wrote:

> They do that to kludge around different operating systems using
> different values for the screen DPI (which invariably have little to
> no correlation with the actual screen DPI) making specifying font sizes
> in points difficult.

Using px doesn't really help any more than pt on a broken system though. 
All it ensures is that it looks right on your screen and not on anybody 
else's.

> [In fact, specifying font sizes in points is bad
> anyway as it won't respect the browser settings for your default font
> size (not that IE actually /has/ such a setting).

Indeed. The use of 'pt' also really irritates me, but (a) it's better 
than px, and (b) 'larger' etc or percentages seem to work really poorly 
across different browsers.

My favourite, without any doubt at all, is sites that set a relative 
font size like "70%" (it's not like the user would set the browser's 
default font to the one they want to READ or anything...) and then set a 
leading in pixels. *arrggh*.

You go to incrase the font size, and the page explodes into a mess of 
overlapping lines. Why anybody insists on using an explicit leading on a 
web page is beyond me. I suspect it's often print designers who are 
thrown at DreamWeaver and told "go".

> The CSS spec actually recommends scaling px'es relative to a reference
> pixel of "one pixel on a device with a pixel density of 90dpi and a
> distance from the reader of an arms length" if your display resolution
> is unusually high or low.  (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS1#length-units)

What a horrifying kludge.

--
Craig Ringer