A final note on the subject of font-size, which I wrote about previously: Felix Miata, came up with an article on physical screen font size which goes much deeper than usual in describing browser defaults. He raises an interesting point, in which he explains that most of the web’s visitors actually have their default font-size set to 12 points (not 16 pixels), which equates to 1/6″. However, very few people have their operating systems set to the correct DPI value of their monitors, and therefore rarely see fonts their correct size — although, ironically, a wrong setting is now less likely than it would have been 5 years ago, with newer monitors having higher pixel densities (and hence smaller pixel size) than before.

In a nutshell, a medium font is likely to be physically smaller on a modern computer than it would have been in those days of 640 or 800 pixel wide CRTs. Newer screens may be sharper, making smaller print easier to read, but if your eyesight’s bad, you’ll need to get out that magnifying glass for some of those high-end or ultra-compact screens.

Still, according to some Usenet zealots, you should be calibrating your display to be showing the correct font size, if things are too big. Yeah, right!