difference between Mac Firefox and Windows - font-size

[yankeyhotel]

i am having an issue with a navbar in Firefox. on the mac everthing looks good, but on the pc side the fonts are showing up as a completely different size breaking the layout. I am using the latest version of Firefox 2 on both operating systems. Also as a side note everything is working well in IE and Safari.

I am specifying the font-size in pixels, so it seems that they would be the same. has anybody had this type (no pun intended) of problem before?

thanks

[JAB Creations]

Try...

* {
font-size-adjust: 0.50;
}

It's a CSS 2 (?not CSS 2.1) spec and you're correct, fonts are a messy business on the web sadly still to this day.

- John

[machi]

Would this work to, conversely, make fonts less fuzzy in Mozilla if originally tested in IE/Firefox on Windows? I bump into this problem all the time. Drives me nuts.

[Wlauzon]

Sometimes in cross browser support, em's work better than pixels for text.

Have not checked lately, but at one time using pt's really messed up on some MAC's.

..fonts less fuzzy in Mozilla if originally tested in IE/Firefox...

Firefox *IS* mozilla.

[edited by: Wlauzon at 7:43 pm (utc) on May 24, 2008]

[machi]

Gah, sorry, I meant Safari

[poppyrich]

Make sure you press Ctrl+0 (and its Mac equivalent) to make sure the page in Firefox in not being Text Zoomed.
I once spent two hours trying to figure out why my fonts were showing up so much bigger in FF before realizing that the page was bumped up a notch - I must have hit Ctrl+ by mistake in FF at some point.

[swa66]

Good point about zooming poppyrich, but also a good reminder not to try too hard to design for a specific font size, users can and will override your settings.

[yankeyhotel]

@john

tried it, but it either made it to big or too small, i fixed the problem by using javascript to get the browser then loaded a separate style sheet. I know it's kinda messy, but I am kinda out of time and patience. if anyone else has any ideas, let me know.

thanks again

[nozza_nolan]

Hi all, I have been finding differences between mac and Pc versions of firefox. I am finding differences in font sizes in both whether I use px, em's % anything! it's very annoying!

Also I have noticed some alignment differences in the the pc and mac versions of 3.

Yankeyhotel you said you used some JS to sort it, what was your code or
does anyone else know some PHP or JS I can use so I can roll out different stylesheets for the mac and pc versions to iron this out?

Thanks,
Nozza

[Xapti]

I would personally recommend accommodating variable font size into your design, so that you still won't have to worry about user's setting minimum font size up (or text increase).

The cause of your issue though, I am uncertain of. Check specificity, and if you have any other declarations which may be changing the font size.
Obviously, also make sure minimum font size isn't set on FF. I don't really see how specifying font size will result in this problem.

[poppyrich]

Font rendering differs considerably from Mac to Windows and browser to browser. Different philosophies involved, it seems.

There's an excellent article on it, search: joelonsoftware

"Font smoothing, anti-aliasing, and sub-pixel rendering"