05.12.98 CSS & Design Spec [ Rookie Query ]

[Shawn J.P. West (BlackSheep)]

I have been using CSS style sheets for about three or four  months now.
I have read many things on this list about styles and there use.
I have  questions.

In all the books I've read and site I've gone to usually it's described
that you use the descriptive size when giving a size. On a couple of sites
I've found that when you do a style sheet and you open a page let's say
Netscape a site will look one way. Take that same page open it in IE the
site looks different the fonts are usually larger on one vs
the other. Now i know that for the most part people say we are not looking
for exact sizes here we want a "feeling" the reason for the CSS is to add
consistancy not to get the "printed page" [ we have DHTML  & XML for that
". ]

Also take the same site and open it on a macintosh type size will look
larger or smaller depening on the orginal platform the site was created
on. My question is when validated "font-size=9pt" pulls back and error but
the spec says that that is a valid value. to use pt, em ect. If one can
prove that one brower and one platform has a consistant behavior vs
another and adjust for that via SSI  is it not prudent to do so. 

Or is it not prudent to design to such specific needs even though it is
possible. I hope this makes sence what i am asking. Your pages are
probably hit more, by all kinds of stuff out there. What are your design
requirements? How do you develop a CSS spec and how tight or loose is the
design it caters to?



<absolute-size> An <absolute-size>
keyword is an index to a table of font
sizes computed and kept by the UA. Possible values are: [ xx-small |
x-small | small | medium | large | x-large | xx-large ]. On a computer
screen a scaling factor of 1.5 is suggested between adjacent indexes; if
the 'medium' font is 10pt, the 'large' font could be 15pt.

Different media may need different scaling factors. Also, the UA should
take the quality and availability of fonts into account when computing the
table. The table may be different from one font family to another. 


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