Comments on: Using em’s for font sizing

By: Dave Woods

Dave Woods — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 10:52:50 +0000

@parms – you can use em’s or percentages, the idea behind setting the base font size to 10px using em’s or percentage means that you can use either 1.6em or 160% and both would make the font 16px.

If you were to actually set the font size on the body using px then this still doesn’t solve the problem of browsers resizing the text.

I agree with your last point that it probably is becoming less of an issue but if you understand how em’s and percentage work for font sizes then it’s not all that difficult so why not do it?

I completely agree with regards to your comment regarding ems for layout, that’s a completely different issue and requires a lot of time to build a layout that will resize.

By: parms

parms — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:49:49 +0000

Why wouldnt you just set the font size in Ems in the body tag and then use percentages. Surely that is clearer. This way You could even set pixels in body tage and still use percentages through the rest of the css.

I like you article but still cannot understand why EM’s are considered so important.

Ems are good for text but you can run into real problems if you take them to the next level and start using them for structure.

Also is it really requierd when all modern browsers actually zoom in on the content as opposed to increase font size.

By: avinash

avinash — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:47:57 +0000

Dave it is really usefull info…

Thank you buddy

By: Dave Woods

Dave Woods — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:08:04 +0000

Completely agree Evan, that was the point of the article that we should be using em’s on the web

By: London Web Designer Evan Skuthorpe

London Web Designer Evan Skuthorpe — Tue, 25 May 2010 14:49:43 +0000

I’ve been using em for font sizes for a few years now and wouldn’t recommend going back to px sizes.. em’s are just better… so there!

By: Andy Ford

Andy Ford — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:47:57 +0000

@Dave – No problem! You can view source and copy id or download it from the main page http://aloestudios.com/code/emchart/ however I do plan on keeping it available for a long time =)

By: Dave Woods

Dave Woods — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:17:33 +0000

Yeah thanks Andy, I’ve been using it for as long as I can remember. It’s easy to calculate an em once you know the formula but as a quick reference it’s a fantastic tool and something I make use of whenever I’m putting some CSS together Thanks again.

By: Andy Ford

Andy Ford — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:36:33 +0000

I’m glad to see that my EmChart is helpful to other developers! Cheers!

By: gorkreg

gorkreg — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:09:47 +0000

I am (was) one of those designers who “revert back to using pixels” because of the inheriting ems problem. Never understood why it didn´t work. Thanks a million!

By: Dave Woods

Dave Woods — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:49:33 +0000

Thanks, that might be another article later then… it’s basically just a blockquote with a background graphic and left padding to push the text over. Simple but effective