J
Jim Royal
Bob said:Now, that said, whether you choose to agree with it or not, the web
is now an advertising medium. Not every site is the W3C and a bunch
of boring text specifications. Businesses design their sites (and in
fact an entire coordinated look for their publications) based on
graphical/visual appeal. That requires developing graphics in certain
sizes and including text elements. The relationship between the size
of the graphics and text is key facet of "graphic design" (Hence
my earlier comment regarding your lack of a professional graphics
design background). You may choose to ignore those design rules if
you wish. I do not.
Well said.
There's a tendency among some to get religious about HTML and CSS, and
to view anything that differs from the One True Way as a compromise (in
the perjorative sense). There's also a tendency among some to conflate
design principles with ethical principles.
My approach with regard to font sizes is simply to create something as
clearly readable as possible. In my experience, the average web surfer
finds 1.0em text to be too large for comfortable reading. So, I
typically use 0.9em (or even 0.85em at the outside). It depends on the
font face used, and how common that font face is. It also depends on
the content and design of the page, not to mention what the client
wants/needs.
I also never specify fonts sizes in pixels because Windows IE users
are handicapped with pixel-sized fonts. As long as I'm using scaleable
font sizes, the site visitor has options.
The fact is, no one font size (even 100%) will please all visitors. So,
the best course is to design to piss off the fewest, while leaving
options for everyone else.