Using ems rather than pixels for typography
In years gone by, web designers primarily used ems for sizing typography, rather than pixels, because earlier versions of Internet Explorer were unable to zoom text set in pixels. For some time, modern browsers have been able to zoom text on screen, even if the size values of the text were declared in pixels. So, why is using ems instead of pixels required or preferable? Here are two obvious reasons: firstly anyone still using Internet Explorer 6 (yes, those two) automatically gets the ability to zoom the text and secondly it makes life for you, the designer/developer, much easier. The size of an em is in relation to the size of its context. If we set a font size of 100 percent to our <body> tag and style all further typography using ems, they will all be affected by that initial declaration. The upshot of this being that if, having completed all the necessary typesetting, a client asks for all our fonts to be a little bigger we can merely...
