Warp wrote:
 >
>   Actually IE seems to have a pretty peculiar way of interpreting CSS.

IE has a pretty peculiar way of interpreting everything. ;)  Mozilla is 
probably your best bet as far as rendering a given page correctly.. 
assuming that the HTML, CSS, and so forth are correct and valid (which 
they should be anyway).

On setting an appropriate text size:

Using absolute size keywords will have different effects in different 
browsers, as there is no standard text size for a given keyword. 
Likewise, using points will foul up modern browsers, as they tend to try 
to compensate for the viewer's physical screen resolution so as to draw 
the text at a real-world correct size.. obviously not only is this not a 
predictable effect, but since the rest of the page won't scale to match, 
it becomes impossible to "fit" text to a certain layout or to graphics.

I personally prefer using pixels, as *in theory* every browser should 
interpret a pixel value identically. Unfortunately, the CSS people 
decided it would be a clever idea to redefine a "pixel" as a tiny 
fraction of the viewing arc, or some such nonsense.. this provides 
forward compatibility with printers, super hi-res monitors, and so 
forth.. but I don't see that it does so any better than points or ems, 
and meanwhile it completely breaks the one advantage that pixels had, 
which was to be able to draw text at a certain size relative to every 
other graphic, piece of text, widget, or anything else on the screen. 
Anyway, Opera follows the notion that these fake CSS pixels are better 
than real ones, and I have seen Mozilla's people argue over it, so even 
pixel-based layouts may break someday.

Ultimately, it boils down to this: you're screwed. The best you can do 
is pick something that you like that will hopefully work for everybody 
and wish for the best. People will bitch; endeavor to ignore them.

On the apparent size difference between serif and sans-serif fonts: my 
first guess would be that this is due to differing x-heights (the 
x-height being more or less how high the "middle" part of the font is 
relative to how tall the letters are; for instance, a lowercase letter 
with no ascender, such as "c" or "m", will usually be as tall as the 
x-height). Serif fonts tend to have an x-height somewhere near the 
middle, while many sans-serif fonts have larger x-heights (Verdana, for 
instance, has a really big one). Using a large x-height can enhance 
readability by allowing more resolution for lowercase letters (which, 
after all, make up the majority of text) but it will also cause the font 
to appear larger.. and, conversely, using a smaller one will make the 
text look smaller. In other words, it's mostly just an optical illusion 
and you shouldn't worry about it more than you have to.

Of course, there are other possibilities; the two fonts may have a real 
size difference (for instance, if one of them has some extra space added 
to the top and/or bottom of the glyphs, thereby requiring that the 
characters be small to make room) which would cause them to appear as 
different sizes at the same point size, or your browser may be 
displaying them at different sizes for some reason, or whatever. But I 
would suspect the x-height first.

That was probably more than you wanted to know ;)

-Xplo

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