Warp wrote:
> 
>   What? One of the nice features of CSS is that you can, for example,
> make different types of links with different colors, and now you want
> to take this joy from me? ;)

Just because we CAN use CSS does not mean that we MUST use CSS. ;)

In all honesty, though, badly-used gimmick CSS is the new annoying 
feature for "rilly kewl web sights!!!!11", joining the ranks of things 
like BLINK and MARQUEE, embedded MIDIs, Javascripts that demand that you 
tell them your name, and so on. You would do well to consider using CSS 
to do the same work with less effort.

(This is general advice, BTW, not specific to your site.. which I 
haven't actually seen as I type this!)

I agree with the need for link appearance consistency, too. Remember, 
your web page is also a user interface. ;)

-Xplo

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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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>     The text size is a bit big, imo.

Let me guess:  You are using IE on Windows?  Probably with the big system
font setting as well?  IE comes with too big default font sizes.  You just
have to adjust them and keep a reasonable adjustment as default.  If your
default font sizes are too big it is not a flaw of the site but of the
defaults of your browser.

    Thorsten

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3d6ea21b@news.povray.org...
>   Actually IE seems to have a pretty peculiar way of interpreting CSS.

As mentioned in aprevious post, IE on Windows handling of CSS is badly
broken.  Don't even try to fix it, you will just break every other browser
on the way.  Your site does not depend on font sizes for layout, so it is no
big deal that they appear bigger.  Perhaps in five years of so M$ will fix
their Windows version as well (the Mac version works properly using what is
supposed to be the same layout engine!)...

    Thorsten

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Thorsten Froehlich wrote:

> (the Mac version works properly using what
> is supposed to be the same layout engine!)...

  I noticed this recently, on the iMac of a client, even with other M$ 
applications... isn't strange? I mean, why the hell would anyone want their 
apps. to work better on a competitor OS? ...hmmmm... really strange.

-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

La Persistencia de la Ignorancia
http://www.ignorancia.org

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Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
 >
> Perhaps in five years of so M$ will fix
> their Windows version as well (the Mac version works properly using what is
> supposed to be the same layout engine!)...

No, it isn't. Mac IE has a separate codebase from Windows IE and uses a 
different rendering engine.. it's more like a rewrite than a port.

Even so, the Mac version still misinterprets CSS in places (some of 
which are very annoying). Mozilla is probably still your best bet for 
correct rendering.

-Xplo

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Well, I changed a couple of "small" to "smaller" and it seems that IE
interprets that one correctly (that is, really make the font smaller than
the default for this block). I haven't had the chance to see it with Mozilla,
but I suppose there shouldn't be any difference there.
  Thinking about it, using "smaller" instead of "small" is better, as the
former is a relative font size while the latter is an absolute one. The
former does not depend on which size is the default in the browser.

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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hughes b <omn### [at] charternet> wrote:
> Are you going to rely on the browser navigation buttons instead of having
> jumps within the pages?

  I will probably add a navigation bar at the top of the page.
  I wonder if there's any way in CSS to make the position of an item
fixed. This way the navigation bar would be fixed at the top of the
viewing area independently of where you are in the page itself (this is
imho a much better option than using frames). I faintly remember seeing
some pages do this.

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

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"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote in message
news:3d6f24bd$1@news.povray.org...
> >     The text size is a bit big, imo.
>
> Let me guess:  You are using IE on Windows?  Probably with the big system
> font setting as well?  IE comes with too big default font sizes.  You just
> have to adjust them and keep a reasonable adjustment as default.  If your
> default font sizes are too big it is not a flaw of the site but of the
> defaults of your browser.
>


    Yes, IE 6.0, Win2K. However, the text on every other site I visit is
just fine. If it were the browser, surely I'd've noticed it on other sites
by now (I do a fair a bit of web-surfing).

--
Pandora/Scott Hill/[::O:M:C::]Scorpion
Software Engineer.
http://www.pandora-software.com

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"Bruce" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message
news:web.3d6f0923f81cfb0fd2b18b190@news.povray.org...
> hughes b wrote:
> >A whole group of links change to the visited link color just by going to
> >one.
>
> IE appears to just remember which pages you've been to,
> and since many of the links just jump to named anchors on the a single
> page, they are all marked as visited.
>
> It works as expected in Mozilla.

Makes sense now, thanks. I thought it could have been some CSS issue.

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