Hi all,

First I want to thank Frederick for his help with the last post (in July) My computer was misbehaving on its way to breaking permanently so my sincere thank you is belated.

New computer has IE7 (sob), all my pages with CSS (and the few, only about 8 pages, made by a WSIWYG editor) now can not be adjusted by the viewer for font size. I know I can just regress to IE6 but that won't help those with IE7 of course.

(I tried searching the forum first and couldn't find the answer to my dilemma.)

the index page is
http://www.elfinspell.com/

Only the java script will adjust, when user tries to change text size with IE7.
(this is a WSIWYG page)

The sitebuilder offering by yahoo is clearly not compatible with IE7, I expect that is true with other webhost offered site building tools but don't know that for a fact.

However, on my totally CSS pages (all the other hundreds of pages)
the user can not adjust the font size to suit his preference, either

Example Url:

http://www.elfinspell.com/HalfHoursCure.html\


As you can also see, this inabilitiy to adjust applies to all text specified with px as size, as in the pagenumbers floating to the side in this page:

http://www.elfinspell.com/VillaniTitle.html

I know, I know, I should never have used pt or px for text size, but all my pages are designed to be printable. I know, I know, I could have made a separate printable version. But I didn't because it about killed me to learn what I have struggled to learn and I did not have anything but dial-up capabilities in my little backwater (Appalachia, USA) until a few months ago and redoing so many pages again after I learned deprecated but functioning CSS was (and probably still is) too much for me. (I redid them all once already for Safari browsers) So far I have managed tolerably, but with IE7 deciding apparently to dump all the deprecated terms like pt and px, I am in deep kimchi (a 60's polite euphemism from the Viet-nam era)

Last but not least, I know, I know, I should have one off-site central style sheet and fixing all this would be a snap. But I don't, nor do I have that lovely MAC global find and replace function.

Be kind, pretty please, since I already have said "Told you so" to myself far too frequently. But some other folks may need to know this as well who have older pages.

A miracle is in order I fear. However, if this is so then "deprecated" might better read no longer usable in the directions some place.

It also might be worth a note or warning in the CSS Validator tool.

IE7 dumped a whole lot of the IE6 fonts that were pretty popular too.


This seems to be a not very friendly tactic to either me or viewers, since I know better than to override their viewing preferences and now IE7 has done it thoroughly.

My next question if I am forced to redo all these pages, is there any way I can specify the font for a printer without a separate page? Is there some nifty little script that would only kick-in if for printing purposes?

Thanks, on bended knee, in advance for any miracle or near miracle,

Susan

IE6 can't resize the text either. IE can't resize text if the font size is set in points or pixels. That's only one of the reasons why you shouldn't use a fixed font size. Use a relative font size such as % or em (% is less buggy).
http://htmlhelp.com/reference/css/font/font-size.html



I wouldn't expect those things to be compatible with anything at all. If anything, they are more likely to be compatible with IE. Fixed text size is probably seen as a feature. More power to you for not seeing it that way.

Hi Pandy,

I could always resize the text in IE6 with both my CSS pages and with the WYSIWYG built pages.

Maybe that is not the problem then. I just assumed that was the reason.

Several websites I have visted are also not allowing the user to adjust the font size, not just mine.

Like this webhost provider:

http://crystaltech.com/ctcontrol.aspx

And yes, once again I am considering changing webhosts, and this time I am really going to do it!

There are several other sites I have found where it is not possible to adjust the size of the text.

So much for Microsoft being sensitive to any website built before IE7 and any of the users who have it installed and can no longer adjust a lot of web pages for their own needs.


My other question is how do I specify the font in % so that I have some idea of how it will print?

Thanks for saying I was being nice to consider users' eyesight!

S.

On the first page http://www.elfinspell.com/ I can resize the yellow text on blue background, the text that begins "Monday, January 7, 2008". Hardly any other text can be resized. That's because it's set in pixels. IE 6 is not able to do it. Either you used another browser before or you have made changes to the page.



Why change host because they have a sucky online editor? They are (almost) all sucky. I'm afraid you have to learn how to do it right. If you are going to search for a host with a tool that does it for you you'll probably be at it till doomsday.



http://htmlhelp.com/reference/css/font/font-size.html

I recommend that you start by fixing the markup errors and CSS errors reported by the online tools.

Actually, all you need is separate style sheets for media="print" and media="display". See Eric Meyer's Going to Print.

Or maybe the preferences were set differently in the old MSIE 6 than in the new MSIE 7. MSIE is able to ignore document fonts, font sizes, and/or colors. Although that does seem an unlikely possibility.

As already has been suggested...
http://forums.htmlhelp.com/index.php?showtopic=3872&hl=

Susan, you won't solve anything by trying to walk around the problems. You have to handle them. Your page won't change until you do.

Hi Darin,

As I said the index page is a Wysiwyg page and I know it is not "valid" I only have about 8 such pages out of hundreds of pages I hand code. However I could still adjust text size with it before.

The other example I put up above is one of these hand coded pages, which does validate. The text size still can't be adjusted by the viewer in IE7. This is it:

www.elfinspell.com/HalfHoursCure.html

This, and all the other hand-coded pages validate completely with the CSS validator or I wouldn't have put the little icon on the bottom of those pages. With the html validator, the last 2 lines don't validate because it is generated by the yahoo server. It never has but I don't add that script and I can't take it off.

I quit using the sitebuilder after my first 20 pages, and learned CSS, because I was interested in "doing it right."
Despite the deprecated pt and px, my hand coded pages validated it is a little startling to find that deprecated now means disabling with ie7.

When I viewed my site on computers at some of the places that I have worked (hospitals), and other people's computers, some of my peers knew how and were able to adjust the text size on some pages to be larger, (because they refused to wear their bifocals). All the browsers at places I have worked have been IE6. I know that you all have told me my fonts were too large before, but to people my age they weren't large enough. Everybody could fix them though to their preferred size in IE6.

With IE7 neither the Lowes.com (the catalogue page functions and find a local store functions) or the Staples.com work properly in some of their functions, either. And the font size can't be adjusted on other larger sites. (Misery loves company.)

I have double-checked this on another person's IE7 browser before I posted here.

Susan

It does not validate, but never mind. Again, the text cannot be resized in IE no matter the version if you use points or pixels as the unit for font-size. On this page your use pt.

Just don't use those units for screen.

This sounds like an adjustment that completely overrides the specified font size. I don't have MSIE handy, but it's something like Tools > Preferences... > Accessibility > Ignore font sizes specified in documents. Other than that, pandy is right. No version of MSIE can resize fonts that are specified in pt or px.

And I know people for whom they are still too small. The point is that using font-size:100% for body text should be safe for everyone. Maybe it isn't optimal, but it's at least usable. If it wasn't usable, then the user would have figured out how to fix it.

I don't get it.

I don't know why I could always adjust text size before with IE6 and my pages with the pt and px. But I could, on either the sitebuilder 8 pages or the hand-coded ones.

I also don't understand why Pandy says my page, the hand-coded one does not validate. When I just checked the CSS validator page again and it says it does. And other than the 2 server generated lines of code it also validates in the HTML validator.

If there is another validator, I don't know about it but have relied on these 2 in creating my pages.

There is also no warning or error that the pt and px will make my text sizes unadjustable by some viewers.
But maybe the CSS validator does not validate for that.

For whatever reason then pt and px will affect IE7 users now, and limit their ability to adjust the text sizes more than it did with IE6, despite validating.

I have relied on the fact that the code, despite being deprecated, was still usable, and adjustable in this way on the web, and validated, but also enabled the pages hand -coded pages to print out very nicely by anybody, without having to creat another 2 GB of pages to allow for this to happen in a reliable fashion.

Although I have only 8 pages made by a WYSIWYG, many people do not, and those pages also cannot be adjusted by the viewer, they use other font-size descriptors besides px and pt but the effect is the same in IE7.

I do realize that now, for IE7 users, I will have to duplicate all the pages with a separate style sheet for printer making my webpages more complex to use. This impacts the amount of material I will be able to put on line depending on my webhosting disc storage capacity.


S.

No, it doesn't. But that's a minor matter.
http://www.htmlhelp.com/cgi-bin/validate.c...s&input=yes
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%...roup=0&ss=1

Does it really matter what has changed from before? Now is now, and the reason to the problem is what we say it is, both on your pages and those other sites.

IIRC, it used to issue a warning at one point. Our CSSCheck does issue such a warning:but it is basically a CSS 1 checker, and hasn't been completely updated for CSS 2.1, so I tend to refer people to the W3C's CSS validator.

IMHO, you shouldn't rely upon the user being able to fix your design like this. It's much better if the design adapts to the user's browsing environment automatically. Most users won't bother to fix a broken design. They'll just hit the back button (or close the window, or close the tab, or otherwise leave).

If you specify the font size of a parent element in px or pt, then it doesn't help to specify the font size of child elements in percentages or ems. The damage is already done, because the percentages now refer to a percent of the px or pt size.

Or you could just provide different style sheets for different media, and have only one copy of the HTML content. See Eric Meyer's "Going to Print" (see my previous reply for a link).

Thank you