Re: 120 DPI & HTML text woes

RobG wrote:
Yeah wrote:

Ever since I upgraded my Windows display to 120 DPI (kind of a necessary change), fonts have been clearer and graphics have been crisper. However, the 25% automatic increase in the text size on my web site has thrown it all askew.


The whole concept of 'screen resolution' has been utterly bastardised. In one place, Windows tells me that my 'screen resolution' is 1280x1024. In another it says that if things look too small I should 'increase the DPI to compensate'.

Now logic tells me that if I pack more dots into each inch, images will look smaller - but that ain't what happens.


Combining my monitor's native resolution of 1280x1024 and the XP setting of 120 DPI, everything else is great, but now standard Serif on my web site looks like I'm reading a Dr. Seuss book.

Leave the DPI at 96 and change the screen to 1024x768 gives exactly the same result in theory, but in practice the quality of text will likely be very different (it certainly is for me).


[...]

By telling Windows to use a setting of 120 dots per inch (dpi), you are telling it to send image to the screen that would appear correctly sized if your screen had 120 ppi. The fact that your physical screen probably is 96 ppi means that the images appear larger.

Absurd, isn't it?

The rationale for Windows pretending to have a display of 96 dpi when in fact screen were physically 72 ppi was to make text look larger. The whole relationship is so screwed up that web designers now set the font size to 80% because otherwise text looks too freakin' big - they are compensating for the fact that the text was artificially enlarged in the first place.

Now that screens really are at 96 ppi (or higher), the text is too small again so users change the 'resolution' to 120 dpi and the whole freakin' kludge continues /ad infinitum/.

What a crock.


[...]

I've been educated enough to know that coding text in pixels is a no-no. But I need some guidance in reoptimizing my text so it may perhaps be most comfortable for everybody.

Stop pissing around with font sizes. Use Firefox and set the base font size to what is suitable for you. Firefox will scale fonts from there - try it at about 16 to 18 pt or maybe 20 pt.

Let users set whatever is comfortable for them.

[...]

Incidentally, 'pixel' is considered to be a relative unit, though many believe it to be absolute.

Absolutely. ;-)


--
Zif
.