Question

For example is it:

body 100.01% and all other font sizes in ems? (is this old fashioned?)

or simply set a font size in pixels e.g. for body 12px like apple.com ?

Thanks

Answer 1

There are a few different approaches. Currently, I set the body in px and then use em calculations for everything else down the hierarchy … this way, everything nicely cascades if I ever decide to change the base font size of the site.

Purists will tell you to accept the browser default and respect the user’s preference, but pragmatically speaking designers and business managers will balk at this, and you will too because you’ll be fielding constant complaints about why something looks different. Sad but true.

At one time (2005-2007 era), you could set the body to font-size: 76%; and this would actually get similar sizing across all of the major browsers, but I’m not sure if this is still true.

The only reason I know of that these methods were popular–as opposed to specifying px–was that Internet Explorer would not let you adjust the text size if specified in px, causing accessibility problems. While that is still true in Internet Explorer 8, one could make the argument that the vast majority of people are using the full page zoom features of the browsers (and pretty much all of them have this feature now, unlike in the days of Internet Explorer 6) so this bit of advice is probably more pedantic than useful.