If you’re a conscientious web designer or developer who cares about accessibility, then I’m sure you’ve spent the last few years drilling yourself into the habit of using relative font sizes (EMs or percentages) rather than absolute font sizes (pixels – PX)?
Now with the advent of modern browsers and full page zooming (as opposed to just text scaling), I’m sure I’m not the only person that’s been wondering whether we still need to be going through the painstaking task of calculating relative font sizes?
It turns out I’m not. In fact someone with a lot more fame and gravity than I, Cameron Moll, has just published an article (Coding like it’s 1999) that raises the very issue:
“It means px can again be considered a viable value for font-size. It means the difference between setting text with absolute units or setting text with relative units is negligible for users. For you and me, however, the the difference is substantial. The burden of calculating relative units throughout a CSS document is replaced by the convenience of absolute units — 14px is 14px anywhere in the document, independent of parent elements whose font-size may differ.”
I know I’m eager to get rid of my calculator and scraps of paper with decimal fractions scribbled all over it. So is it time to switch back to the convenience of absolute font sizing?
Well, perhaps not. As we all know, IE6 is still a thorn in the side worthy of consideration (although the more pragmatic side of me thinks that users who need control over the size of what they read probably ditched IE6 long ago). But also we need to consider that whilst full page zooming has become the default behaviour, it is still an option and users may revert to text scaling for a variety of reasons.
What is clear is that the arguments for using one technique over another are no longer so black and white. I don’t think there’s a right way of doing it or a wrong way of doing it – which for web designers like you and me, has got to be a good thing.
3 fantastic comments
I’m so used to relative sizes I think it would be hard work to start thinking in absolute again! Absolute is definitely worth considering for on-page widgets where font resizing doesn’t work well with tight layouts (e.g. shopping cart summary).
Hello Aaron,
Thanks for the latestarticle on Relative versus absolute font sizes: time to look again? It has helped me a lot.
Best wishes
Graeme
I’ve started using absolute px sizing again for particular tasks , in view of the fact that it both makes my life easier, and that I’m considering less and less the implications of every design decision I make for IE6 users.
Surely the time has come that we should be catering to modern browsers in the first instance; if the text is still legible (if not perfectly proportioned) in IE6, that’s good enough for me.
What are your thoughts?
