new layout on wiki4d

["Jérôme M. Berger"]

Adam Ruppe wrote:
> Going OT here, but I've gotta defend the pixel font sizes.
> 
> I used to do percents, (since I read somewhere that px is evil and
> zomfg never use it...) but I got tired of the constant "bug" reports
> coming in from the clients saying "it doesn't match the psd exactly on
> my Mac". Specifying them explicitly in px avoids this.
> 
> The way I see it, if you care about font sizes, go with px and match
> the design. If you don't care, just don't specify them at all.
> 
	The problem is that px is not even theoretically reliable: it
depends on the screen you are viewing the page on. The text for
wiki4d is 1.7mm high on my screen, that's much too small for comfort
(as a comparison, the way I've configured it, the text in
Thunderbird is 2mm high, e.g. 18% more, and lots of people find it
too small when they look at my screen).

> pt isn't reliable either; it is different across browsers, and
> apparently, it is only technically defined in print anyway. Moreover,
> the rest of the site's design is probably in pixels, so it is easier
> to see it fitting to stick to the same all along.
> 
	Pt is supposed to be reliable (and it is reasonably so on recent
browsers, e.g. not IE6) because it adjusts to the screen resolution
(not to be confused with the definition). Pt is an absolute measure
(there are exactly 72 points in an inch) and relates to the actual
size you want the text to appear no matter what medium is used to
display it (whether a 72dpi screen, a 96dpi screen or a 600dpi printer).

> 
> Now, I hate all designer's choices (in my mind, graphic design is a
> synonym for incompetent producer of illegible ugliness), so in my main
> browser, I have a min and max size set, so I'm free of their bad
> decisions.
	Unfortunately, that doesn't work: it is perfectly legitimate for
some text to be smaller (for example the text at the bottom of the
page that says "last changed on..." or "made with...") and setting a
min size will prevent those from being smaller than the page content.

> Every browser in use, aside from the aging IE6, scales px
> fonts just fine too, so it is ok there.
	Yes, it is possible to scale pages, but that's a pain and shouldn't
be necessary anyway. I've configured my browser so that the default
font size (and the default font for that matter) is the one I find
most comfortable to read text. A web site which expects people to
actually *read* the contents should respect those choices (a web
site whose contents is mostly pictures is another matter entirely).

		Jerome
-- 
mailto:jeberger at free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeberger at jabber.fr

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