284 HOW: Style Sheets for Designers: Trouble in Paradise

Lest we forget, good old IE3 drops the ball by sizing percentages relative to the user’s default font size rather than to the parent element. In English: If the web user has set her browser’s default to 10px, IE3 will display <STRONG> at 20px and not the 24px you intended. If her browser defaults to 16px, <STRONG> will be 32px. Too bad for you. Too bad for your visitor.

In spite of their accessibility benefits, percentages still fail in too many browsers. What works? Pixels—pixels or nothing. In case we’ve failed to communicate, we will summarize our findings as follows:

Looking Forward

Web designers will continue to be limited to using pixels in their style sheets—despite the accessibility hazards associated with that practice— until fully standards-compliant browsers exist and are widely used. The approach might have its drawbacks, but failure to work correctly is not one of them. As web designers, our job is to control the visitor’s visual experience to communicate. For the time being, the approach outlined here will allow us to do exactly that. And soon enough, Lord (and browser companies) willing, the full power of CSS will be ours.

Can you take CSS further today? Quite possibly. It depends on the makeup of your audience and your salesmanship with clients. As explained in Chapter 13, A List Apart converted to an all-CSS layout in February 2001, and many sites have since followed suit. For details and encouragement, see http://www.alistapart.com/stories/99.