Fonts set as a percent better than ems for mobile?

[computerkitten]

Is it better these days to set the body font for a website as well as additional text elements as a percentage than ems to have the best viewing capability from an Iphone, Android, to any larger screen?  Interested in feedback on scalability when it comes to text elements since responsiveness is becoming more and more important.

Thanks,

CK

[David Chu]

Hi,
This kind of question creates lengthy arguments in CSS forums. That's why I don't hang out in them anymore. Lots of grim alpha grammarians in those. 🙂

You're right to think about that, though. You could do it either way. If you look at the latest Genesis Sample Child theme, they are doing "rem", which is neither of those! Rems is CSS3, and is like Ems, but does not inherit an Ems setting from a parent item, so it's easier to control, many people find. I really like rem now that I'm using it.

I would suggest checking out that theme for ideas. It's extremely well thought-out, and is a big improvement from the previous Genesis Sample theme, IMO. They will have a rem setting for an item, and a pixel setting right under it. This is so that terrible browsers like IE7 can still render a decent page even though they can't understand "rem". I find that I barely need to make any changes at the different device levels.

Sometimes if I just have one change at some size, I'll use a quickie percentage, but "rem" would work equally well, as would "em". But you can still try pixels if you want - any of those can be made to work. My bias is towards rem.

Hope that helps some. Others may chime in.

Dave

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Dave Chu · Custom WordPress Developer – likes collaborating with Designers

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