Question

I’m cleaning up some old and terrible css, which includes:

body {
  font-size: 100.01%
}

While researching, I found body { font-size: 100.01%; } vs body { font-size: 100%; }?, which explains the reason for setting font-size to 100.01%, but doesn’t tell what browsers this ‘fix’ targets.

Do any modern browsers still face this issue, and if so, which and what versions?

Answer 1

Answer taken from CSS: Getting Into Good Coding Habits by Adrian Senior

This odd 100.01% value for the font
size compensates for several browser
bugs. First, setting a default body
font size in percent (instead of em)
eliminates an IE/Win problem with
growing or shrinking fonts out of
proportion if they are later set in
ems in other elements. Additionally,
some versions of Opera will draw a
default font-size of 100% too small
compared to other browsers. Safari, on
the other hand, has a problem with a
font-size of 101%. The current “best”
suggestion is to use the 100.01% value
for this property.