different browsers

Steve Thomas sthomas at library.adelaide.edu.au
Tue Dec 9 20:56:25 EST 1997


At 11:46 AM 97/12/09 -0800, Gary L. Fraser III wrote:
>I realize this is a fairly novice question, but....
>
>I am far from an HTML expert, but I do the webpages for my library and have
>been running into an irritating problem. I've viewed the pages in IE 3.02
>and 4.0, and in Netscape 3.0 and 4.0. It looks different in each. I keep
>experimenting with different font sizes, but I can't seem to find one that
>looks ok no matter what the browser. The really frustrating part is that
>the computer that I do all the editing on (IE 3.02) looks ok and then I
>view it on another terminal (also IE 3.02) and the script is much smaller.

The two other responses (so far) to this query have ignored the obvious:

Browsers have preferences/options, which among other things allow the user
to set their own preferred font size. When you play with font size in HTML,
using e.g. <FONT SIZE=+1>, the size you specify is relative to the base
font, which is determined by the browser's options. So if your development
machine has font size set to, say, 12 pt, and the other machine has it set
as 10pt, the result will be as you described.

The moral is that you can't do anything about the user's preferences, so
don't worry about it. (The user can even choose to ignore style sheets, so
there really is no solution.)


Steve
 ___________________________________________________________________________
 Stephen Thomas, Senior Systems Analyst
 Mail : Barr Smith Library, The University of Adelaide, South Australia 5005
 Phone: (08) 8303 5190                                   Fax: (08) 8303 4369
 Email: sthomas at library.adelaide.edu.au
 URL  : http://library.adelaide.edu.au/ual/staff/sthomas.html
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 ** own opinion, and not the policy of the University of Adelaide Library.**

 "I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's" -- William Blake



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