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Px, pt or em for font sizes?

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  • 04-03-2010 1:22pm
    #1
    gimme5minutes
    Registered Users Posts: 387 ✭✭


    So what are the differences between the 3 ways of specifying font sizes? I thought I read somewhere that it is better to use pt or em (can't remember the reason) but vbulletin uses px and that is probably the most widely used internet software out there.


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    #2
    mneylon
    Registered Users Posts: 7,739 ✭✭✭mneylon


    gimme5minutes wrote: »
    So what are the differences between the 3 ways of specifying font sizes?
    http://www.kyleschaeffer.com/best-practices/css-font-size-em-vs-px-vs-pt-vs/
    gimme5minutes wrote: »
    vbulletin uses px and that is probably the most widely used internet software out there.
    Err no it's not

    The most widely used software is probably something like Apache :)

    Blog | Tweets



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    #3
    herya
    Registered Users Posts: 1,571 ✭✭✭herya


    Ems are relative, pxs and pts are not. It used to make a difference as ems were easier for visitors to scale (display bigger font in their browser) when needed. Modern browsers have bulit in font or site scaling though so this factor is less important now. It is still a factor in mobile design though where easy scaling is a big plus.


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    #4
    cormee
    Registered Users Posts: 1,801 ✭✭✭cormee


    You should never fix your font sizes. Ems and % are better for accessibility and makes for better housekeeping - set your body text size to whatever % you think looks best in your normal stylesheet and scale every other font size based on that.

    When you need to do different style sheets for accessibility (ie. large font version of your site) or mobile devices, as already mentioned, you only need to increase the body text size. If you use fixed sizes you'll need to change your sizes on all instances where the size is fixed.


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