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

[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!...

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

Please don't call me an idiot, I know already that I am one.

Thanks for your help,
Jane

[John Hosking]

melinama wrote:

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

Smart move, Jane! Idiots don't do that. Even some smart people don't do
that.

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.

This neither confirms nor refutes your idiocy. Take another turn.

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

AFAIK, no. But (at the risk of starting a cranky argument, only to be
slammed by the next folks) you probably don't need to do that. Possibly
(I'm guessing here, since you didn't mention a URL or other specifics)
you have set the default text unrealistically small in the first place,
if it only looks good at 800x600. I mean, if the boundary of legibility
is already reached for some statistically large percentage of visitors
to your site at 800, and not, say, at 1024, then you've probably styled
your stuff too small to start with.

Quite likely you have already seen stats like the one here (mid-page):
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp . By no means
exact, and I don't believe PDAs and such are even on their radar, but I
don't think aiming at the 800x600 is the best move. "We've grown beyond
that now." :-p

I would advise aiming for a basic comfort zone (what you or other
normally-sighted 30-year-olds see comfortably) at a screen res of
1024x768 (or so). Text will be larger on the (presumably older) 800px or
640px screen, but if you code in relative units the user can probably
scale down. Text will be smaller for owners of wide screens, but again
relative units in the code and cluefulness in the screen's owner will
allow scaling.

I'm also trying to picture a Web page aimed at 800px people, which then
successfully scales up to a wide-screen display (like what, 1600px?) in
a full-window browser. I don't see these very often. Do you have a URL?

Anyway, you'd need scripting to even find out what the resolution is, so
you can't count on that method.

Please don't call me an idiot, I know already that I am one.

Well, you are an idiot, but only for thinking that you are one. ;-) Or
for accepting help from idiots...

Thanks for your help,
Jane

You are welcome. HTH.
--
John

[Jukka K. Korpela]

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 sheet 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/

[Ed Jay]

melinama scribed:

>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!...

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

You can't do what you want using only CSS.

I use a small javascript that ascertains my viewers screen resolution and
then directs my page to use the appropriate style sheet (or pertinent
portion). You could also use a javascript to alter the <bodytag, or if you
use a page wrapper, change its font-size. These, and similar solutions will
fail if your user has not enabled javascript. To overcome this you could use
a server side solution and dynamically generate the page based on user's
screen resolution.

Bottom line, AFAIK, you can't do what you want using CSS alone.
--
Ed Jay (remove 'M' to respond by email)

[Andy Dingley]

On 2 Apr, 12:30, "melinama" <Jane.Pepp...@g mail.comwrote:

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

Fortunately not, as this wouldn't actually help. It's not a question
of display resolution, it's a combination of resolution, monitor size
and desktop font settings (for IE at least).

body { font-size: 1em; } is the way to fix this.

Posting the URL to your site helps too.
There's rather more behind this story (that simple fix can make IE
look _too_ big in some cases), but that's as much as you get without a
URL.

[Bergamot]

John Hosking wrote:

melinama wrote:

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

you'd need scripting to even find out what the resolution is

That would probably be fixing the wrong problem, anyway. Chances are
she's not setting font sizes in em or % units to begin with, which is
the likely cause of the client's complaint.

--
Berg

[Bergamot]

Andy Dingley wrote:

>
body { font-size: 1em; } is the way to fix this.

Better:
body { font-size: 100%; }

This avoids an IE bug scaling em units.

--
Berg

[Chris Beall]

melinama wrote:

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!...

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

Please don't call me an idiot, I know already that I am one.

Thanks for your help,
Jane

Jane,

http://pages.prodigy.net/chris_beall...nt%20size.html provides some
background (without cranky arguments...). The net is that if the user
has set up their browser with a default font size that they find
comfortable, and you DO manage to succeed with your stated objective,
everything on your site will appear huge to the user with a window
larger than 800 X 600.

On a technical note, which dimension would you use to trigger your
font-size change: height, width, total window area? Remember that the
user can change height and width independently.

Finally, you can see some of the sniffing techniques that could be used,
if you chose to ignore all the good advice you've been given, at
http://pages.prodigy.net/chris_beall...vironment.html.
Note, however, that most of these techniques depend on JavaScript, which
some users disable.

Chris Beall

[Andy Dingley]

On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:11:47 -0600, Bergamot <be******@visi. comwrote:

>Andy Dingley wrote:

>>
body { font-size: 1em; } is the way to fix this.

Better:
body { font-size: 100%; }

This avoids an IE bug scaling em units.

Even better:

<style type="text/css">
body { font-size: 1em; }
</style>
<!--[if IE]>
<style type="text/css" >
body { font-size: 80%; /* 120dpi (Windows "large fonts 125%"
)*/ }
</style>
<![endif]-->

This avoids a desktop font scaling bug in IE on the majority of modern
desktops

[Stan Brown]

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 08:31:53 -0700 from Ed Jay <ed***@aes-intl.com>:

I use a small javascript that ascertains my viewers screen resolution and
then directs my page to use the appropriate style sheet (or pertinent
portion).

That's so wrong, on so many levels.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/200..._wont_help_you