Fwd: [WEB4LIB] CSS font-size keywords and Opera

[Thomas Dowling]

>Has anyone had any success using the CSS font-size keywords with Opera?
>
>I'm been using the workaround as described in an article by Todd Fahrner,
>published at the A List Apart web site -
>http://alistapart.com/stories/sizematters/ - and it works well for dealing
>with the IE bug, but Opera seems to ignore it altogether.

IMHO, Todd Fahrner's CSS articles are admirably thorough and detailed, but 
ultimately go the wrong direction.  Witness the fact that with my monitor 
settings, they are set in almost unreadably small type and cannot be scaled 
in the browser I use most often (a feature/bug whose merits can be argued 
either way).  In other words, he knows his stuff, but uses them in ways I 
consider dubious.

By the way, can anyone cite the source for the article's claim that "Sizes 
range from xx-small to xx-large and are relative to users' preferred 
'medium' settings"?  Both CSS specs are clear that these are absolute 
sizes, and leave their calculation entirely up to the user agent.


>Here's what I have:
>
>#menu   {
>         font-size: x-small; //this sets the size for IE5.x
>         voice-family: "\"}\"";
>         voice-family: inherit;
>         font-size: small //this is the correct size for others
>         }
>html>body #menu //then this is supposed to work with Opera.
>         {
>         font-size: small
>         }

You may need to post a URL that demonstrates this.  My copy of Opera 6.0 
handles these selectors and properties correctly.


Let me suggest "#menu {font-size: smaller;}".  By definition, that means 
the next smallest font in the xx-small to xx-large table.  No fooling with 
inheritance bugs, no guesswork about which browsers know which convoluted 
selectors.   A browser whose inherited font-size is "medium" jumps down to 
"small" and one with currently displaying "small" jumps to x-small.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu