On 29 Apr 2004 05:00:52 -0700,
mi********@yahoo.com (minchu) posted:
I have used CSS in HTML page (font-verdana size-8pt), looks fine in
windows but in linux the fonts are corrupt and its too small. Kindly
help me and tell what is the solution to correct this.
Well, congratulations. You now realise that many people will have a
problem with your page, even if you think it's only going to be Linux
users. I'll fill you in and let you know that MSIE users *will* have
problems, too. And people using other browsers.
The problem is specifying 8pt sized anything. It's inappropriate for a
webpage to specify anything in fixed sizes, for various reasons.
It's not a "fixed size" it's a proportional size to something that doesn't
have a consistent size on the medium. (What is 8pts on your screen, my
screen, his screen, screens at different sizes? There is no concrete
answer.)
Even if there was some way to determine that 8pts was always "yay big" on
every screen, 8pts is going to be "too small" for many people. And since
you'd fixed the size, there's no easy way for them to increase it to
something readable.
That's the font sizing problem in a nutshell (unavoidable inconsistency,
and problematic results).
Verdana's another problem in itself, that'll make things even worse. For
people without Verdana, they'll get an even smaller font as a substitute
(you'll have picked 8pt Verdana for it's size, and Verdana is bigger than
most other fonts, therefor a substitute will look even smaller than you
hoped).
There's plenty of pages giving masses of details about those issues, just
search for "what's wrong with fixed sizes," and "what's wrong with
Verdana," you're bound to find plenty of them.
The solutions are:
"Don't specify fixed sizes," especially small fixed sizes. Better not to
specify any sizes at all, unless you really really need to. You usually
don't "need" to, and trying to fit text to images (as a common reason for
thinking that), is fraught with its own problems because you can only test
your own system. There might be some use to making some text a bit bigger
on part of a page (e.g. "READ THIS" important type of comments), but
picking a smaller than usual font often means its too small to read (why
put something on a page if it's hard to read?). Let the browser display
things in its usual font size, the one the reader is comfortable with.
And, "don't use Verdana," at least not without due thought about the
problems it causes, and if you're use of it is going to be one (e.g.
Verdana in h1 elements probably isn't going to be a problem, because
they're already quite big, bigger than the body text, so they're hardly
going to look worse than some other font that's just a bit smaller but
still very big).
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