hey all. currently working on www.eddiewalter.com/staging/ and trying to figure out how to get ff and ie to both render the font size fairly close to each other. i know that they won't render the size exactly the same, but there seems to be a much larger difference in the rendered sizes than there should be. how do i get them to look more closely equal? i've declared the font size as a percentage in the body tag and then all of the other sizes are percentages throughout the style sheet (www.eddiewalter.com/staging/main.css) as well.

body {
    padding: 4px !important;
    margin: 0px;
    text-align:center;
    height: 100%;
    background: url(../images/page-bg.gif) repeat;
    font-size: 100%;
    }

The only way to nail down type size the way you want is to provide a fixed (pixel unit) type size in the body rule.

To bear this out:

IIRC on install, Firefox sets a default type size of 16px (12pt @96dpi) for proportional type. The Medium type size setting on IE is the same. If any of those settings are changed at any time by the user, you'll see a type size disparity between the two browsers when type is proportionally sized (that is to say, with percentages, ems, or keywords).

Once this is done, Firefox users can still increase their type size independently of the rest of the layout (View => Text Size) without regard to the type size specified in the stylesheet. If you use pixel unit sizing in IE, the user loses their ability to change the type size independently of layout, and must use the Zoom facility (which is only available in IE7).

My anecdotal understanding is that casual users don't change the type sizes from the defaults, and most in fact don't even know how.

For those of us working under professional (read: usually both exacting and clueless about the limitations of Web typesetting) art directors, the usual solution to your problem is to set a pixel unit type size in the body rule. However, the requirements and preferences of your intended users should suggest that you're better off sticking with the proportional approach.

In the latter case, one can baseline the comps against default type sizes, and test the layout against a range of type sizes in order to ensure that the layout doesn't blow out at the extremes of the range (83-133% of defaults is what I usually work with).

P.S. At present your principal type size is too tiny to be read with ease by anyone with significantly impaired vision. FYI.

thanks persist1. i had a hard time understanding your reply at first. but i figured it out. =)