«

2012-09-10 2:36, Jonathan N. Little wrote:

> It is not like you can fork:
>
> Got Verdana?
> Then body { font-size: 80%; }
> else
> body { font-size: 100%; }
>
> Cannot do this in CSS

Ehem, in a sense, you can... The font-size-adjust property was designed
(largely) for reasons like this. It was present in CSS 2.0, dropped from
CSS 2.1, now resurrecting in CSS3 - as even more abstract:
file:///C:/Users/Jukka/Documents/CSS3/font-size-adjust.html

It's a bit tricky conceptually, and implementations have issues. If you set

font-size-adjust: 0.545

(using a value that appears to be the x-height ratio of Verdana
according to the most reliable studies [like mine]), then a browser
should behave so that text in Verdana is not affected and text in other
fonts gets size-adjusted (normally upwards) with a factor determined by
their x-height rations.

But among commonly used browsers, only Firefox supports
font-size-adjust. And using the code above, it size-adjusts Verdana,
too, so it probably has a wrong idea of its x-height. Worse still, it
adjusts it downwards.

My suspicions were confirmed when I look at
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/...nt-size-adjust
where the value of 0.58 is used (it was mentioned as an example in the
CSS 2.0 spec, and it is simply wrong).

So in a sense you can. Allow 8 years for browsers to catch up (including
the fix to Firefox, which might be the hardest part).

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

In article <>,
Lewis <> wrote:

> In message <>
> Alfred Molon <> wrote:
> > In article <k2ikqh$r1n$>, Jukka K. Korpela says...
>
> >> Your site http://www.molon.de/ is a good demonstration of the problems
> >> of typical use of Verdana:
> >> 1) font set to small, fixed sizes (13px, 10px), obviusly because Verdana
> >> looks bad in common default font sizes
>
> > It's as big as the fonts on most sites in the web. Most websites have a
> > font size smaller or as big as mine. A size larger than 13px would start
> > looking huge.
>
> You should *never* specify fonts in absolute sizes. Period. You are
> simply being hostile to your potential viewers. The fact that other
> webmonkeys are ****ing morons is not an excuse.

It is simply not true that you should *never* do this these days.
There are circumstances where it will do no harm and you will not be
being hostile to anyone.

--
dorayme

On 10/09/2012 06:50, Lewis wrote:

>
> You should *never* specify fonts in absolute sizes. Period. You are
> simply being hostile to your potential viewers. The fact that other
> webmonkeys are ****ing morons is not an excuse.
>

This is a bit absurd. It isn't hostile. If you are publishing something
you make decisions on how to make it accessible to which people
according to your own interests and abilities. If I choose to publish on
paper and photocopy it I can, If I choose not to have my website
translated into spanish then that's my decision as it would be if I say
I can't be bothered with IE users or people who for some inexplicable
reason want to zoom just the text and not the whole lovely page as one
as i designed it. That's just my perogative.

Tim W

On 10/09/2012 06:50, Lewis wrote:

>
> You should *never* specify fonts in absolute sizes. Period. You are
> simply being hostile to your potential viewers. The fact that other
> webmonkeys are ****ing morons is not an excuse.
>

This is a bit absurd. It isn't hostile. If you are publishing something
you make decisions on how to make it accessible to which people
according to your own interests and abilities. If I choose to publish on
paper and photocopy it I can, If I choose not to have my website
translated into spanish then that's my decision as it would be if I say
I can't be bothered with IE users or people who for some inexplicable
reason want to zoom just the text and not the whole lovely page as one
as i designed it. That's just my perogative.

Tim W

Alfred Molon wrote:

> Beauregard T. Shagnasty says...
>> I had to press Ctrl-Plus three times so I could read it.
>> [your Verdana numbers reference site]
>
> I had no problems reading it. Probably age plays a role, i.e. at a
> certain age people are unable to read small text, but then there are
> reading glasses for this problem.

Then we can assume you don't care about us visitors "of a certain age."
BTW, my glasses give me a measured and tested 20/20 vision.

You have beautiful photographs on your site, but I can't say much about
your choice of font and size.

--
-bts
-This space for rent, but the price is high

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> 2012-09-10 2:36, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>
>> It is not like you can fork:
>>
>> Got Verdana?
>> Then body { font-size: 80%; }
>> else
>> body { font-size: 100%; }
>>
>> Cannot do this in CSS
>
> Ehem, in a sense, you can... The font-size-adjust property was designed
> (largely) for reasons like this. It was present in CSS 2.0, dropped from
> CSS 2.1, now resurrecting in CSS3 - as even more abstract:
> file:///C:/Users/Jukka/Documents/CSS3/font-size-adjust.html


Gotcha! Better to point to an example online

>
> It's a bit tricky conceptually, and implementations have issues. If you set
>
> font-size-adjust: 0.545
>
> (using a value that appears to be the x-height ratio of Verdana
> according to the most reliable studies [like mine]), then a browser
> should behave so that text in Verdana is not affected and text in other
> fonts gets size-adjusted (normally upwards) with a factor determined by
> their x-height rations.
>
> But among commonly used browsers, only Firefox supports
> font-size-adjust. And using the code above, it size-adjusts Verdana,
> too, so it probably has a wrong idea of its x-height. Worse still, it
> adjusts it downwards.
>
> My suspicions were confirmed when I look at
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/...nt-size-adjust
> where the value of 0.58 is used (it was mentioned as an example in the
> CSS 2.0 spec, and it is simply wrong).
>
> So in a sense you can. Allow 8 years for browsers to catch up (including
> the fix to Firefox, which might be the hardest part).
>

Interesting! Learn something but still technically I am still correct.

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Alfred Molon wrote:
> In article <k2jj02$3lb$>, Beauregard T. Shagnasty says...
>> I had to press Ctrl-Plus
>> three times so I could read it.
>
> I had no problems reading it. Probably age plays a role, i.e. at a
> certain age people are unable to read small text, but then there are
> reading glasses for this problem.
>

You seem to miss the point. If you when scale the text size down for the
over-sized Verdana, but the user only has the normal-sized fonts on
their system then the text is even smaller!

It is like trying to get one-sized uniform to fit on your celebrity
basketball team of George Stephanopoulos, Ryan Seacrest, Jon Stewart,
Paul Reubens, and Shaq O'Neal!

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

On Sun, 9 Sep 2012 19:06:41 +0200, Alfred Molon wrote:
> In article <k17hbm$82f$>, Tim W says...
>> What are the problems with Verdana in practice?
>
> I don't know. My site uses verdana.

hrrrumph.. Your site may _specify_ Verdana, but my _browser_ pretty
much functions as _I_ see fit.

Jonesy

2012-09-10 17:06, Jonathan N. Little wrote:

>> file:///C:/Users/Jukka/Documents/CSS3/font-size-adjust.html
>
> Gotcha! Better to point to an example online

D'oh! Happens to me every millennium! And I wasn't even trying to point
to my test page (its address had just crept into my clipboard) but to
the CSS3 Fonts draft on font-size-adjust:
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-fonts/#font-size-adjust-prop

In addition to the practical considerations, which make the property
questionable, or maybe worse than useless, there's a theoretical note to
be made. The property revolves around the "aspect value", or "aspect
ratio" in more common parlance, i.e. the x-height of the font divided by
the font size. This means that we consider the relative height of
lowercase letters without ascenders or descenders. But that's not all!
What about those ascenders or descenders, about uppercase letters, and
about diacritic marks, which are frequent in many languages (Finnish,
French, Vietnamese for example)? They also affect the "real", visual
size of a font, as compared with the font-size property.

This reminds me of my favorite example about Verdana and line height:
set the font to Verdana, do not set line-height at all (i.e. let
browsers use their default for Verdana), and test with some text
containing loads of "g" and "Å". You will see how the "g" brutally
attacks the ring of "Å" on a line below it.

Of course, many other combinations of a letter with a descender and an
uppercase letter with a diacritic mark create similar effects, if you
default line-height when using Verdana. It's just so that "Å" is one of
my favorite letters, and a very common letter in my third-best language
Swedish, and a typographer's nightmare. It is virtually impossible to
design "Å" properly, but a font like Verdana has failed in a
particularly serious manner. It uses such a large part of the font
height for uppercase letters that any diacritic above them is bound to
cause damage, to the letter.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:24:45 +0100, Tim W <>
wrote:

>On 10/09/2012 06:50, Lewis wrote:
>
>>
>> You should *never* specify fonts in absolute sizes. Period. You are
>> simply being hostile to your potential viewers. The fact that other
>> webmonkeys are ****ing morons is not an excuse.
>>
>
>This is a bit absurd. It isn't hostile. If you are publishing something
>you make decisions on how to make it accessible to which people
>according to your own interests and abilities. If I choose to publish on
>paper and photocopy it I can, If I choose not to have my website
>translated into spanish then that's my decision as it would be if I say
>I can't be bothered with IE users or people who for some inexplicable
>reason want to zoom just the text and not the whole lovely page as one
>as i designed it. That's just my perogative.

It is also hostile.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko