Declaring a font size?

Is 16px the browser industry standard?

[Broadway]

I'm redesigning my site and am having trouble understanding how my pages appear to visitors. A great deal of this has to do with the font size used by the browser.

Is the the standard for modern browsers a font size of 16px? Does anyone routinely set the font size in their html when designing pages as a way of helping to control their appearance?

[choster]

On most Windows browsers the default font size is 16pt (not px!); on the Mac I've seen both 12pt and 16pt (e.g. Safari and Firefox differ). But you really should design the site in a way that the user can adjust the font size in his/her browser without serious problems.

[rocknbil]

There really is no standard, not in pixels anyway. Besides, 16px at one resolution is very small at another resolution, and in some browsers disables the ability for the user to resize the text. You may **think** this is what you want, but if someone needs to enlarge the font due to visual problems, it is very annoying (and affects accessibility.)

The most outspoken choice for font specification is in ems but I have had it go wonky on me too many times. I prefer to specify my text size by percentage and let the end user's settings work the relative sizes. Yes, this requires testing at various sizes to make sure your layout doesn't blow up in your face - but it's a way of workin'.