CSS : Font Size Tips

**Mr. Tech** · 17th June 2005, 10:46 AM

Found this article and thought it would be interesting for you.

Care With Font Size

Quote:

Good usage of CSS's font properties

Here are a few basic rules that one should follow in order to create Web pages that are easy (enough) to read, using CSS's font properties.

* Do not specify the font-size in pt, or other absolute length units. They render inconsistently across platforms and can't be resized by the User Agent (e.g browser).
* Use relative length units such as percent or (better) em, or, even better, set a base font-size for the document and use absolute size ([ xx-small | x-small | small | medium | large | x-large | xx-large ]) or relative size ([ larger | smaller ]) when defining the font size for a particular element within the document.
* Avoid sizes in em smaller than 1em for text body, except maybe for copyright statements or other kinds of "fine print."
* If using a small font-size, prefer a legible font-family with a high aspect value (see the section on font-size-adjust in the CSS2 specification for an explanation of the aspect value), which are more likely to be legible at such small sizes.
* If using several choices in a font-family property (in order to let the system choose the best available font out of a list), you can use the font-size-adjust property to force a specific aspect value.