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Re: Any official clarification on Text-only zoom and RWD?

for

From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Feb 25, 2016 6:55AM

Hi Guy,

I don't think we mean quite the same thing.

If you size everything in EMs (and I mean everything, including layout,
text and images/video), then text-sizing acts in the same way as zoom.

What others (e.g. Jonathan) are saying is that text-sizing *without*
affecting layout or triggering a media query is needed.

By sizing everything in EMs you are taking away that option, you leave them
with only the option to zoom (in effect).

By the way, it looks to me like your main layout uses percentages, not EMs,
so your site isn't a good example of an EM layout. (I'm not criticizing it
as a layout, just saying it isn't an example of an EM layout.)

So your layout (with text-only sizing) fulfils what Jon was asking for, but
that isn't the same thing as an EM layout.

NB: Text-only sizing is harder to do these days. Firefox and Safari have it
as a non-default option in the view menu, but for Chrome and IE (haven't
tried in Edge) you have to dig into the settings and know where you're
going.

Given that most sites now work better with zoom (see Jared's comments),
zoom seems like a good default!

I think I need to make some examples...

-Alastair