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RE: pixels to ems - was RE: Relative vs. absolute units

for

From: John Foliot - bytown internet
Date: Jan 7, 2003 3:45PM


...based on the width of the widest letter in the english alphabet, the "M"
(thus the name - although I always thought that "W" was wider...). Netscape
6/Mozilla 1 actually install with a default font size of 16 pixels, IE's
"default install" (at least on a PC, can't say for Macs) is about the same,
I beleive it's 11 pts +/-

Thus the example page on my site is never guaranteed; as a matter of fact I
state "under normal circumstances"
(http://www.bytowninternet.com/examples/relative.html). That said, icons
such as the PDF icon or text "buttons" could still stand to benefit by
scaling, especially a small icon like the acrobat icon, which is about 16px
square.

However, as always, your mileage may vary and I by no means advocate using
"ems" to size *all* images on your page(s).

JF

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kynn Bartlett [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 5:08 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Cc: <"John Foliot - bytown internet"
> Subject: Re: pixels to ems - was RE: Relative vs. absolute units
>
>
> An em equals the size of the current font, and that can be changed by
> the browser,
> by the user, by the author's style sheet, by the user's style sheet, by
> the HTML,
> ...
>
> An em only equals 16 pixels as long as the font size equals 16 pixels.
>
> --Kynn
>
> On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, at 01:47 PM, Kevin Spruill wrote:
>
> > Jules, et al...
> >
> > Rough justice division reveals that by dividing #pixels by 16 you get
> > the equivalent in ems... a little tweaking from there should handle it
> > if/when necessary
> >
> > HK
> --
> Kynn Bartlett < <EMAIL REMOVED> > http://kynn.com
> Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com
> Author, CSS in 24 Hours http://cssin24hours.com
>
>
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