text size opinions

[neilkw]

hi,

I've worked my way through stacks of useability forums and allsorts on the question of preferred font sizes and am still undecided.

What is the feeling out there? I'm keen to make my site with w3c approval but also a real useability/aesthetic approval for the majority of users who may have partial sight and other issues.

Pixels? ems? %?

I'd value all your thoughts or any pointers to similar discussions.
Thanks

[mwinter]

Steven Poley has written a good discussion on this topic entitled, The Wrong Size Fonts.

The guidelines as far as I'm concerned boil down to: only use percentages for continuous media; body text should remain at the default user size (100%); and the smallest text should not be less than 85% of that default.

For the latter guideline, it's important to remember that percentages are cumulative. For example, consider a footer. You might choose to display its contents slightly smaller, so you apply

#footer {
  font-size: 90%;
}

However, say that there's content within that footer that should be even smaller - perhaps a copyright notice. It should be at least 94.5% as 90% * 94.5% = 85.05%.

Mike

[neilkw]

thanks for that

[boogyman]

In my work as web design I have found that it is easiest to make the "body" of your entire document one font size and then just use percentages of that from there.... everything inside the body will inherit any properties you place in the body tag, thus if you ever want to change the font sizes of your page you only need to change 1 size and the rest will automatically be changed based upon it... Thus I believe it is worth taking the extra 20 - 30 minutes to make everything in % of your initial font size.

[Twey]

I have found that it is easiest to make the "body" of your entire document one font size and then just use percentages of that from there...

If you're suggesting an absolute font size there, that would totally defeat the point of using percentages in the first place.

[neilkw]

I can see your point, pissa. (so to speak)
cheers