Relative Font Sizes

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For once, I think we can all agree with Jakob: web designers should abandon the tyranny of absolute pixel sizes and give their users the benefit of scaleable fonts for greater accesibility.

The main problem with this is the wild inconsistency with which different browsers render relative font sizes. What looks like “70%” in one browser will not be that in another. Worse, if you rely on table-based layouts (you shouldn’t, but it will often be unavoidable), add to that Mozilla’s unique property of passing relative font sizes into table cells. Where before we were accustomed to setting a font-size for both “body” and “td” tags to avoid getting giant 1em text in our tables, now relative font-sizes will reduce your text to chicken scratches within tables in Mozilla.

Right now the only way I can see around this problem is to either not use font sizes at all and stick to whatever the browser uses as its default, or use some fancy script-based sniffing to load the stylesheet appropriate to the user’s browser. The latter, however, is too much a hack, which developers in a more ideal world should not have to resort to. Hence the need to continue the fight for standards.

Anyway, I’m still working on a solution for the Mozilla font size table cell problem. Any recommendations?

Havalina

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Blake (who, by the way, is back to the “Heidelblog” name) tells me that Havalina is playing in DC tonight; in the Hispanic area around 14th and U St NW. I’ll be passing through there on my way to the Metro as I head back for Bawlmer; if the timing is right, maybe I can pop in for some photos.

(Update: Aw, I can’t make it. I still need to pass by Hecht’s and buy a pillow.)

Riding, riding…

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Like anarthrous Dane, I too inflict upon myself the rigors of public transit on a daily basis. Between now and the time school starts, I’ll still be working for the same company, so the trip to Washington goes thus:

1. Baltimore Metro to Light Rail on Howard Street,

2. Light Rail to Baltimore Penn Station,

3. MARC commuter train to DC Union Station, and…

4. DC Metro to Dupont Circle, where I walk to work.

Four different train systems in a day. All in all, it’s about a 90 minute commute one-way, not counting walking time, on a good day. Just about as long as it took to get to and from work back in Manila; except that I’m traversing far greater distances in that span of time — Forty miles instead of seven.

If I didn’t like travelling by train so much, I would, like, absolutely die. Like, gag me with a spoon, totally.

I’m a Bawlmerian now

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Little Italy sure is… um, Italian. Lots of Italian bakeries and cafes, and charming Fells Point is just a few blocks down the street, right on the other side of a giant ghetto-type black neighborhood which the neighbors told me to avoid at night. (Too late, though; I’d already walked right through it.)

I also wandered all over downtown looking for a decent place to get dinner, and had to settle for a cheesesteak from a pizza place on Baltimore Street, right in the middle of the local red-light district. Yeesh.

These overlay area codes are confusing. Is a 443 number in Baltimore still local even if my phone is a Baltimore 410? Because my ISP’s dial-up numbers are all 443’s. :P

Eve of the Move

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It has been five months since I made the Jump, and once again the season of change is at hand. Tomorrow morning, in preparation for my upcoming M.A., I will be moving to the charming Little Italy district of Baltimore, to the home of an art teacher kind enough to rent me his third floor while I spend the year studying and working.

So turns the new leaf. After this is all done, I’m going to need a nice, long vacation.

Don’t Link!

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Linking policies sure are popular these days. You may be interested, then, in Don’t Link To Us: a blog about said topic.

Need a freeware text editor with syntax-highlighting and inline FTP access? I just downloaded cEdit. Will tell you how it goes, even though I should be asleep now. (Update: “Mscomctl.ocx or one of its dependencies not correctly registered.” Grr. Update update: File acquired.)

Do you like today’s photolog, or does it make you want to yell, “Sic semper tyrannus”?

Some words from Mr. Hughes

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I’ve just returned from an excellent Brazilian dinner with a friend from church. (Thanks, Rod!) Rich, rich stuff, that Feijoada.

Thank you, Mr. Hughes, for the response in my comments. I must admit that part of the blame for the unpleasantness must fall on the shoulders of the blogosphere’s own reactionary cliquishness, and I apologize to all my brothers and sisters if at any point I fed it — or fed upon it. I hope that any nastiness on either side that may have arisen from this JesusJournal issue is water under the bridge, and though I still share misgivings with other Christian journalers about certain responses, I pray we can all try to get along from here on.

Later: Ouch. Bene D seems mad, and after a little more reading I can see why. Personally, I’ve decided the problem is a bit below my threshold of notice from here on out. Anyway, the links aren’t even generating any traffic, occasional targeted spam can be deleted without reading, the idea of a “Christian Blog Manifesto” has been beaten to a grisly pulp, and I haven’t emailed the guy, so I don’t need to deal with acrid responses from him. Therefore, I stand by my declaration of closure.