What is the *preferred* way of defining text size - CCS using %... using "x-small"

M

Michael Fesser

.oO(Charles Sweeney)
Fair enough. I thought you weren't talking to me?

I didn't killfile you, just didn't want to talk about that other topic
anymore. I don't like to be called a nazi in whatever context.

But this entire (sub)thread is OT, so please lets stop it (and this damn
crossposting).

Fup2 poster (now for the 3rd time)

Micha
 
J

Jsp

Shiperton said:
Hi

What is the *preferred* way of defining text size - particularly ordinary
text in
the body of a page - these days?

Whatever happens we need to make sure that it can be resize by the user.

But using CCS even "x-small" seems to us to be slightly large... whereas
"xx-small"
is minute!

Alternatively, using % can be unreliable because if one uses
a (e.g.) 75% *within* an (e.g.) 75%, then it suddenly gets way too small !!

As a result I prefer working with "x-small" but my web-designer
thinks 'x-small' 'xx-small' (etc) look very "basic"...

What is the 'received wisdom' on this?


Ship
Shiperton Henethe
OK, read the question raised, view the thread-header-tree in your
newsreader and lean back...
As a (not too experienced) webmaster I am really suprised to see how
such a 'simple' topic as tekstsize can raise so many opinions.
RNIB (http://www.rnib.org) raised earlier in the thread simply states:

"Font sizes
Summary: Text can be any size you choose as long as it is flexible and
can be changed in the browser."

Apparently thats to easy. I looked at this tree of posts shortly after
reading somewhere on a website how simple it is to become a webmaster
and that all you need is a teksteditor.

I know that this is more or less OT in this post, but think it is an
interesting observation.

Happy Hollydays,
Jsp
 
M

Matt Bradley

Michael said:
.oO(Chris Hope)




Yep, unfortunately ... :(

But I would rather live with a visually broken URL in some news readers
than with such a redirection service. Call it personal preference.

Actually, some of the guidance on useability and accessibility that I
have read suggests that short, easy to memorise / understand url's are
preferable to long ones. Redirection isn't ideal, but from a UI point of
view, it's got a lot going for it.

To say "I would rather live with a visually broken URL in some news
readers" smacks a bit of cutting your nose off to spite your face, if
you ask me.
 
T

Toby Inkster

Matt said:
Actually, some of the guidance on useability and accessibility that I
have read suggests that short, easy to memorise / understand url's are
preferable to long ones.

But tinyurl.com URLs are not "easy to memorise / understand".
 
C

Charles Sweeney

Toby said:
But tinyurl.com URLs are not "easy to memorise / understand".

Correct. They exist for a reason though. Generally neater for presenting
clickable links that do not need to be remembered.

(Not like I am telling you something you don't know - general point)
 
M

Matt Bradley

Toby said:
Matt Bradley wrote:




But tinyurl.com URLs are not "easy to memorise / understand".

So tell me, which do *you* find easier:

<http://tinyurl.com/6ubwf>

or

<http://www.rnib.org/xpedio/groups/p...website/public_seeitrightaudit.hcsp#TopOfPage>

My CC pin number has four digits - I can remeber that. I memorise many
of my buddies telephone numbers (11 digits) - I don't see it being a
stretch to momorise 5 characters, especially when compared to the
textual soup of the original URI.
 
C

Chris Hope

You are comparing a non-word hexcode URI to an extremely badly thought
out
URI. I don't see how this makes any point. The problem here is not
with human capacity for memory, but with rnib.org's webmaster for very
poor URI design.

And look how many times it has "public" in the URL! I'm guessing it must
be a public document ;)

I had considered setting up something like tinyurl where you could have
a redirection service but choose the text that goes after the domain.
So for example you could register domain.com/photos (where domain.com
is the redirection service) and have it redirect to eg your photos
page. (This was done in the past with the go.to and other similar
domains and may still be offered by some services).

The main issue I saw with this is the when I looked at the number of
people using the tinyurl service. The homepage states it gets 180m hits
a month which works out at an average of 70 per second. I'm guesing
with a free service like that where people rarely look at the homepage
(where the advertising is) it's going to be hard to just cover costs of
offering such a service if it gets so popular. But then maybe I'm
wrong...
 
T

Toby Inkster

T

Toby Inkster

Chris said:
I had considered setting up something like tinyurl where you could have
a redirection service but choose the text that goes after the domain.

I've quite fancied trying to register an Indonesian domain name along the
lines of "message.id" and using it to start a service that redirects to
Google's Usenet archive.

e.g. the post I'm replying to would be:
http://message.id/[email protected]
 
C

Chris Hope

Toby said:
I've quite fancied trying to register an Indonesian domain name along
the lines of "message.id" and using it to start a service that
redirects to Google's Usenet archive.

e.g. the post I'm replying to would be:
http://message.id/[email protected]

That's a clever idea. Much easier than having to hunt it down in google
first.
 
M

Mark Parnell

Previously in macromedia.dreamweaver,alt.html,alt.www.webmaster, Toby
Inkster said:
I've quite fancied trying to register an Indonesian domain name along the
lines of "message.id" and using it to start a service that redirects to
Google's Usenet archive.

You realise of course that now you've made that suggestion public,
someone else will beat you to it. :)
 
C

Chris Hope

Toby said:
I've quite fancied trying to register an Indonesian domain name along
the lines of "message.id" and using it to start a service that
redirects to Google's Usenet archive.

e.g. the post I'm replying to would be:
http://message.id/[email protected]

Unfortunately you wouldn't be able to register message.id ...

http://www.idnic.net.id/

The extension needs to be one of
- web.id
- sch.id
- or.id
- co.id
- ac.id
- net.id
- war.net.id
- mil.id
- go.id

I don't speak Indonesian so can't read anything in the site though...
 
M

Matt Bradley

Toby said:
Matt Bradley wrote:




That's a rather extreme example, but in fact, if I wanted to access this
link in a few days time without consulting the original post, I'd be more
likely to try going to http://www.rnib.org/ and clicking a few links
rather than try to remember tinyurl.com/6ubwf.

Which is easier?
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
or
http://tinyurl.com/57qjs

Well, the former, obviously.

That however does nothing to invalidate my orignal point; that the tiny
url was in fact (and nobody so far has denied it) preferable to RNIB's
original lengthy URL. I submitted this point because Michael F seemed to
suggest that he'd insist on the original URI, even if it did create
useability obstacles, including breaking some user's newsreaders.
 
T

Toby Inkster

Mark said:
Previously in macromedia.dreamweaver,alt.html,alt.www.webmaster, Toby


You realise of course that now you've made that suggestion public,
someone else will beat you to it. :)

I hope they do. Will save me the bother. :)
 
E

Eric Jarvis

Jukka said:
Of course it has. The pt unit means (in CSS - which is what we are
talking about in this issue) exactly 25.4/72 millimetres, so the only
thing it depends on is the metre, which is defined on the basis of
universal physical constants.

True, but has the browser got all the information required to do that?
According to usual CSS principles, the computed value may need to be
rounded to the nearest value that can be used under particular
constraints, and browsers might even do this wrong. But the meaning of
10pt _is_ defined.

And it's exactly because of this exactness why the pt unit should not
be used by Web authors

The problem isn't just that it's precise. The problem is that the
precision in this case neither related to what is seen (we all sit
different distances from the monitor and have different levels of
eyesight) nor to what the browser can reliably represent.

There are uses for the precision of px as a unit for text size. Rare, and
not appropriate for essential information, but px units allow one to
fairly closely align text to images. Whilst I haven't ever actually
encountered such a situation, I can see that it might be useful.

Anyway, pt is only ever useful in a print stylesheet, and even then it
probably means the designer would be better off offering a pdf to download
for printing.
 
C

Chris Hope

Eric said:
True, but has the browser got all the information required to do that?


The problem isn't just that it's precise. The problem is that the
precision in this case neither related to what is seen (we all sit
different distances from the monitor and have different levels of
eyesight) nor to what the browser can reliably represent.

There are uses for the precision of px as a unit for text size. Rare,
and not appropriate for essential information, but px units allow one
to fairly closely align text to images. Whilst I haven't ever actually
encountered such a situation, I can see that it might be useful.

However, in non-IE browsers increasing or decreasing the font size will
still change the size of fonts which are set using px. The text will be
aligned to the image size at the default font size, but if the user has
increased or decreased the default size it won't any more.
 

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