
There are several different ways you can declare the size of a font in CSS. The units fall into one of two categories - absolute and relative.
Abs...
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Awesome to hear that 👍💯✨
call me old fashioned but 90% of my font-sizes are
16px
In visual display media, always
rem
, except on the root of the document (where I usually use pixels because they are de-facto consistent across all platforms. Usingrem
s means that the site layout works correctly no matter how much zoom the user uses, because it all scales together.For print media it gets a bit trickier. I would normally use points there because most printers will know how to handle that correctly without multiple unit conversions (unlike other absolute units which may or may not need to be converted twice). I might use
em
s if I need to offset size relative to the parent font size for some reason, but would probably not use relative units for anything else, instead relying on the (sane) assumption that people are printing at the 'correct' size (and obviously handle margins correctly so that I don’t need to handle separate styles for US and ISO paper sizes).I use 100% for the
body
element, and relative units for everything else—mainly REM. Most of the clients I do work for require that their sites are accessible, which means I need to ensure the sites meet WCAG requirements.There’s this really good article on 24 Accessibility on this subject by Kathleen McMahon which showcases side-by-side examples of what happens, including this one below, where a user sets their font size to "Very large" in Chrome:
This image shows the following:
font-size
and the fixedline-height
properties, thus does not resize according to user preference.line-height
is set in pixels the paragraph text is visually squashed together.REM is a bit more work to implement, but it goes a long way for the user.
This right here.
We went through 6+ phases over the years... AND we're back to
px
for the font-sizes.. but we useem
for letter-spacing andno unit
for line-height... and well, it depends. Sometimes we think about opening up the discussion again... but - mostem
people can't make their argument. We also useclamp()
a lot now - (but mostly with vmin and px...I recently switched mainly to REM, only using pixels for borders and media queries.
yah
rem
a lot for media querie.Using
rem
for everything other than media queries.Yes! I am the FIRST!
On web I prefer rems, but will modify the 16px baseline depending on client needs (like font sizes that adjust based on display width).
Usually pixels if I'm making an Electron application that's on a fixed device screen size and doesn't need to support multiple devices.
Testing has always been a part of my development process its to be expected when you are building a website. Working with pixels is exactly the same it is not limited to
rem
. Some developers preferrem
whereas some prefer pixels as you can see from this discussion. Thats the great thing about being a developer the freedom of choice. 🙂I back you Andrew, I use rem for everything. Fonts, margins, padding, width, height. Scales better with respnsiveness
I used the majority of these in different scenarios/situations, for example:
% - I use it with the border-radius property or when I am interested to take 100%, 50%, of a container.
em - I have used it just one time; at this very moment I don't have another use case to use it but when I used it was like a font size multiplier in a CSS framework that I was building
rem - I use it all time; why? You can set the body font-size and use rem around your text elements taking the value of my body, 15px in my body = 1rem in other sections; so if you want to increment or reduce the font size of all text in your page that is using rem you can add a media query to replace it just in the body, and that's all.
vw/vh - Usually used to take exactly 100% of the viewport height in my header/hero or; when you have a lot of page sections/rows and you want to add space between these, usually in a desktop resolution you can add more but if you are using a smartphone it will be reduced automatically to be more efficient.
wmax/vmin - mmm I used these to create responsive page titles in my hero, using properly these two properties you can avoid using a media query to scale your Text title. Examples:
josejesus.now.sh/
josejesusochoatorres.github.io/ano...
Thanks for the extended input 🙏❤
Your welcome, it was a pleasure; you have chosen a good topic.
For years I used
em
s, then recently I started usingrem
s... but after looking at a few resources I switched back topx
!Having read through the replies here I am going to go away and research some more before I launch my next project.
I always declare the
font-size: 100%;
for accessibility reasons, if the person has a pre-configured size it is very annoying overwrite it.Following this same logic I use the
rem
unitI rarely exceed
2.5rem
I think it is a reasonable size forh1
in some situations it is not pretty but it is sure to be readable and accessible to everyone.I dont'nt know why but I like
rem
Yes I have tried changing it myself in fact I just did a test now on some websites to see what the result would be. It seems to work fine. No I don't really test for that prior to production because as you put it the average user is not going to be technical enough to play around with their browser settings like that they would just scale the browser.
I also just tried scaling some websites that use
rem
my portfolio included and it appears to work the design did not break apart.Take a look at the post by Minh Nguyen on here and also this Pixels vs. Relative Units in CSS: why it’s still a big deal It makes a difference 😊
I'm still using old-fassioned hard-px for most of my UIs. If it's a responsive website, I tend to use em/rem with a base px font-size. For a new project, I've had to make sure my screen had the exact same propotions in 1920x1080 and 1280x720, I've used vw/vh there.
I generally put everything (font and not) in
em
s. The unit has been around pretty much forever, keeps everything in proper proportions, and gives the end user more flexibility in overriding the overall sizes. The root sometimes gets apx
size and thin borders are1px
, but everything else feels like it should just scale.Depends:
:root
, EM or % others.Else:
Mostly
rem
.px
should really be used sparingly.You've been denying em, rem in all your replies. Its for responsive designs and you've been shown a link to it.
What are some designs you've created with 0x would like to see.
Now I'm following the bootstrap and of course its
em
&rem
unitsrem
is the best unit. This article explains why very well.Pretty much em and rem. More often so also on margins and paddings. Some are set global or global for that type of element to create a more consistent look and feel.
If you use
rem
for the fonts, margins, paddings and borders. Then if a user was to change the font size setting for their browser then, the whole page should scale uniformly without breaking.em
syntax.fm/show/107/hasty-treat-css...Always px
14px in paragraph
16px in labels
24px in headings.
Using rem and set the html{font-size} for some some screen sizes like 4k or Retina so content has the right size.
I prefer px since it is precise. I get what I was expecting to get with fewer surprises. I have used em, vh and vw some, but not much.
i don't know why i am afraid of relative units. i always use PX LOL.