Re: Frightened new owner of wide screen finds her web pages are in tiny print on it...

Scripsit melinama:

Hello,

I've looked through alt.html and this group for an answer to my
question.

However, I found only cranky arguments with, occasionally, bits of
hard-to-understand code - out of context - each of which is slammed by
the next people along in the thread.

So I'm afraid to ask this but I need to know!...


You just wasted 11 lines to pointless babbling, and you did not describe the background that made you ask your question. It's in the Subject line, but the purpose of the Subject is to act as an external description of what the message is about.

Regarding your problem with your new wide screen, note that it affects _all_ web pages you view, so trying to fix _your_ pages for _your_ screen would be rather futile. Select the resolution (and thereby pixel size) that suits you. The set your browser(s) to use a default font size that suits you, and hope that web authors are clever enough to let the user decide on the font size, or at least don't mess too much with it.

Is there a way to insert a couple of lines in my style *** that say,
"if the resolution of the viewer's screen is more than 800x600 use a
fontsize 130% bigger"

That's not possible, and it would rather harm than help. Why would the screen resolution dictate the font size? Do you mean that after the user has carefully done what I suggested to you above, web authors should throw in their second guesses, saying that the user's choice is wrong, whatever it is?

One thing to be learned from this is that setting font size in pixels is a bad thing, just as setting it in points or millimeters is, though for somewhat different reasons. When you set font size to, say, 12px, most users get a font size that is pretty close to 12px - with some confusion and oddities as usual - and that's the _problem_. You cannot know the size of a pixel on a user's screen, and 12px might mean just illegible, or something else.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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