Netscape 7 - font sizes seem crazy

[scorpion]

Is it just me or does virtually NOTHING looks good viewed in Netscape 7, the fonts are all crazy sizes (usually too small). Because I think to just give up and design for IE 5 or 6, is there a lot of netscape 7 users?

[jdMorgan]

Me,
Right now.
And this page looks fine... :)

Jim

[msr986]

I don't have that problem. All of my sites look almost identical in NS7/MOZ and IE. (Opera too!)

How are you specifying your font sizes?

[dingman]

About the only difference I notice between IE and the Gecko-based browsers (such as NN7) is that IE likes more whitespace, and doesn't support as much of the CSS2 spec.

[scorpion]

Interesting, my pages look totally different in NN7 and IE6, all of it being font size.

In IE6-MEDIUM FONT (default) looks fine.
IN NN7-100% (default) looks tiny, very bad.
At 150% looks perfect...

Is this just a base font size problem?

[bull]

I don't have that problem. All of my sites look almost identical in NS7/MOZ and IE. (Opera too!)

Same here. Principle: not optimizing for a specific browser. Never. Fonts all specified in pt. And I like NS7 better than IE.

j.

[Syren_Song]

There are font size differences when you specify % or em, but when you use pt or px, they pages pretty much look the same in IE 5/6 and NN7.

Personally, I prefer NN7. But I'm also a bit of a non-conformist. ;)

[scorpion]

Ok, i've been using relative font sizes (+1, -1), etc.. on the recommendation of that usability guy Jakob Nielsen who said users should have control of the font size not designers.. What a load of crap apparently! The pages look awful if you don't use absolute sizes...

[Brett_Tabke]

r u sure you didn't mess with the default fonts in Netscape? Relative should be fine. If I'm not mistaken, I think there are a few on this page.

Absolute font sizes in html (not css) are ok because browser owners can still crank them up if they want. (eg: size="3" is fine, but "10px" is not).

[jdMorgan]

scorpion,

The advantage of fixed font sizes is that everyone sees (almost) the same thing.
The disadvantage of fixed font sizes is that people with less-than-perfect vision cannot adjust the size to suit their personal needs.

You might want to check your Netscape installation verrsus your IE installation, and compare the default font size - I believe both used to ship with it set to 12 or 13 points, which is not tiny. This is the number that you are adding +1, -2, etc. to when you use relative font sizes. If the browsers are set to different "base" sizes, then of course the on-screen size will look different.

There has been a lot of discussion of font sizing in a CSS context, although some of it predates the CSS forum here at WebmasterWorld. You might turn up some useful ideas searching on "px" and "em"

Jim

[choster]

Strange. I've read all the threads about font size inconsistencies but have never been able to reproduce such problems on my own testing machines, which worries me. Most of my sites set body text to 0.8em, without specifying any base font for the body or other containers, and it looks fine/similar (approx. 10-12pt) on IE 5.5, IE 6, NS 7, and Moz 1.2 on Windows 98 and 2000, or IE 5 on MacOS 9, all with default settings.

[jamesa]

Looking at webmasterworld.com/ I'm seeing IE5 Win (98), IE5 Mac (OS X) and NS7 Win about the same, wheras the text on NS7 Mac is smaller. Increasing the font size in NS7 (Mac) to 120% makes it look about the same.

[victor]

In terms of CSS, IE bases its default font size on small whereas NN choses medium.

There is also no agreement on how much bigger x-small is than xx-small, etc. The spec advises a step size of 1.5 (CSS1) or 1.2 (CSS2) but browsers are free to use any value they like.

These things will make a difference for anyone who varies font sizes using the names xx-small, x-small ... xx-large.

Best bet is to use percentages. That should be consistent across all browsers (NN 4.x excepted as usual, I suspect).