pixels or points or em
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- ksv123
for font size on the web
- akrok0
use all 3.
- aanderton0
em is best practice, after that its pixels. Save the points for print!
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong folks.
- DeSiard0
picas!
- bring out the ruler!akrok
- line gauge!DeSiard
- t-square!akrok
- shaedler ftwdoublespaced
- doublespaced0
Does it matter? Also, the question begs the application. Are you talking about Photoshop, or HTML? Weird question.
- what? I specify in pixels, just want to know what was best practiceksv123
- pointsdoublespaced
- d_rek0
aanderton is correct. Em is best practice, then pixels.
Points will always be generated as some weird percentage rather than an absolute value so you should avoid them if you can.
- detritus0
Ems Just Work™
- d_rek0
I'm talking about for HTML/CSS.
I don't think you can specify ems for photoshop, correct? And then I guess it depends on if you're working on a print file or a web file if you used pixels or points, although I would advise against setting any type for print in photoshop as photoshop will output type as a raster object rather than vector artwork.
- monNom0
pixels, ems became irrelevant when browser scaling was introduced. that said, I still use ems for paragraph margins just cause they're easy.
- fyoucher10
ems: relative to parent size, good if you want everything to scale up when a user adjusts their font size manually, like for old folks.
pixels: more precise but you'll likely have probs when viewed on devices w/ diff resolution. Good to use if you know who will be visiting your site and what device they'd be using.
points: like someone said above, that's for print....
- imnotaplumber0
PIXELS.
as monNom said. ems was used when some versions of IE would not zoom text set in pixels.
Design in pixels, code in pixels.
- myobie0
Pixels. Only use EM's if you want to be able to scale the site by changing the font-size of the body (which is what happens when people zoom their text). By default, browsers now zoom the entire page. It is possible to change the font-size of the body with javascript to zoom in the UI, which is pretty cool sometimes, but hard to orchestrate.
Never use points.
- inteliboy0
using em's here.
the word above about pixels is interesting though...
- HAYZ1LLA0
PIXELS from habbit
- honestIy0
The em size unit is recommended by the W3C.
1em is equal to the current font size. The default text size in browsers is 16px. So, the default size of 1em is 16px.
The size can be calculated from pixels to em using this formula: pixels/16=em
- gramme0
I used to design sites in InDesign before transferring art over to Photoshop or Illustrator, so was stuck with using points since they're 99% the same as pixels. But now in CS5, ID lets you measure in pixels. Too bad the program constantly crashes.
So to answer the question, I'd defer to someone else and say "ask your developer buddies."
- Dodecahedron0
whats a em?
- 16pxhonestIy
- learnd someting todayDodecahedron
- ^ didn't see thatDodecahedron
- An em is not 16px. Ems existed long before pixels were even conceived of.doublespaced
- An em is the height of an uppercase M.nb
- utopian0
px > pixels > always
- stewdio0
There's "best practices" and there's "what actually works today." I make it a point not to touch Windows, so I can only speak for Mac, but to get the most crisp antialiasing use Points (and only use regular point sizes, no decimals or un-hinted sizes) for your text size. Then use Pixels for leading. Yes. Points for font-size and Pixels for line-height. This way your leading is sure to match your vertical grid for images, etc. (Ems have never been helpful to me when it comes to CSS.) This works on the Mac for Safari, FireFox, Chrome, Opera, and on the iPhone / iPad with iOS. If this sounds like a dirty hack it's because the entire HTML / CSS environment is one big dirty hack that should have been replaced years ago. Original ur-HTML didn't even have an image tag and typography certainly wasn't a concern. Unfortunately that's the legacy we're still building on. (Done ranting, onto coffee now.)
- interestingd_rek
- He's definitely right on that last count. HTML was designed for scientists. Aesthetics was an afterthought.TenaciousG