[Air-l] Web font sizes

[Nathaniel Poor]

Let me first admit that I didn't follow the entire thread, even though 
I used to be a webmaster (and hats off to the AoIR web crew, while I'm 
at it).

Although someone might have said it already, it did strike me how the 
topic of this conversation reflects the history of the Internet itself.

Initially it was created by academics and had a very open, 
decentralized culture, but over time different interests got into the 
game and have instituted different types of control, and some failed 
instances (like in the mid 1990s when the media giants, in the US at 
least, were going to make the Web like TV since they had no idea what 
the Web was, but they wanted to control it).

Initially, TBL made HTTP/HTML a very decentralized protocol, for 
information and not for publishing and not an attempt to replicate 
print online, so formatting (like.... font size!) would be left up to 
the user's client (web browser) (this is very decentralized in terms of 
control).

Nowadays, what with all of these non-computer types who think the Web 
is paper-based (I hate white background, this isn't paper and the 
contrast kills my eyes: CRTs project, paper reflects, but I digress), 
the move for Web standards is all about control (like CSS) on the 
server end, no longer on the client end.

So, font sizes, yeah.

Decentralizing control allows for all the different browsers out there 
and different versions of them (since they all parse HTML differently), 
so if you make your pages really tightly controlled on your end, it 
won't work and you'll need to update your page formatting constantly. 
I'm a fan of basic HTML and don't worry if it isn't going to look 
exactly the way you want it -- you can't control, for instance, what 
size a surfer's browser window is at for long.

So no I'm not actually answering the question directly.

(I deleted the thread to keep the email shorter and since I'm not 
replying to any specific part of it.)

ndp...

---------------------------------------------
Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Communication Studies
University of Michigan
www.umich.edu/~natpoor