[PseuFighter]

Hey eveyone, I'm building a site right now, and I always come across the problem where text in web pages always looks bigger in Internet Explorer than it does in Netscape. I was wondering if there's a javascript or css code out there that predefines the text on the page so it appears the same in both browsers. I've been working out of GoLive, and haven't come across a solution yet. To see an example of what I mean, go to boston.com, and you'll see the text bigger in IE than Netscape; then go to MTV.com, and the text will appear the same in both browsers. Unlike boston.com, MTV.com uses a style sheet (css), but I'm not positive what's on it. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it! Thanks!

Jarid

[honeydew]

Fonts render at different sizes because of the display DPI. A given point size will translate into a larger screen font in IE because it uses 96 DPI whereas Netscape uses 72. This is also a problem across platforms: Mac is generally 72, Windows 96, other systems 100.

For complete control of your fonts as the are rendered on screen, use CSS. You can specify the font size in pixels instead of points, which should result in the same size text in all CSS-friendly browsers.

For example:

<font face = "courier">
.heading {
font-family: Arial;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 13px;
color: #ffffff;
background-color: #999999
}
</font>

However just because you can specify pixel sizes doesn't mean you should. I'm sure there are some strong opinions on this issue.

[Lumpazi]

i think thats a problem with mac browsers. NS and IE used to display the text smaller than on the pc. NS still does this, IE 5 not any more...

[neoTony]

Two things:

1) Be careful if you are using absolute font sizing in design for professional sites - you could be up for charges if you use them (at least in Australia - does everyone remember what happened to IBM when they used px font specs on the olympics site?). Disability laws over here actually prevent the use of absolute font sizing on pages that contain public information that could be of interest to people with sight disabilities.

2) IE renders relative fonts 1 size larger than everything else. Font size "3" in NN is going to be font size "4" in IE. Your cannot change this.

The best you can possibly hope for is a close match - even specifying absolute font sizes is going to result in some disparity between browsers and platforms.

The "proper" way to specify fonts is by using a stylesheet that uses percentages or ems...they are the only two relative font sizing measurements that render correctly in both of the major browsers.

Oh, and don't even start on NN6...it is not worth coding your pages to work with it

[ 07-08-2001: Message edited by: neoTony ]

[peterthorn]

In order to make the site accessible for everyone to read, you should to use em instead of px, pt etc. Using em gives users the ability to use the increase/decrease font size function on most browsers.

Peter