Why Use Ems for Padding & Margins with Browsers Now Scaling Correctly

Why use ems for padding & margins with browsers now scaling correctly?

EM (et al) units are not for view-port zooming - they are relative to the current font size. They are designed to work such that if I make my font very large (because my eyes are poor) or very small (because I am young and have the eyes of an eagle) I want the white-space around the text to scale with the text. Generally, one doesn't want 20 pt text with a 5 pixel margin between paragraphs, nor 10 pt text with a 50 pixel margin.

For example one wants text with approximately N lines of white-space between paragraphs. Using N em vertical margins achieves a spacing which adapts to the font size actually rendered.

In the modern web, em (et al) units still have their place; but they are not for everything. Essentially, you have to ask yourself, "should this size change with the font?"

Also, what if you decide to change your body-text font size? Many other layout values flow from that body-text size. Say you decide that the default browser viewing size of 16pt-18pt makes more sense than the 10pt size you are now using. If you have set the appropriate things with ems then when you increase the base everything else increases proportionately with it.

Why em instead of px?

The reason I asked this question was that I forgot how to use em's as it was a while I was hacking happily in CSS. People didn't notice that I kept the question general as I wasn't talking about sizing fonts per se. I was more interested in how to define styles on any given block element on the page.

As Henrik Paul and others pointed out em is proportional to the font-size used in the element. It's a common practice to define sizes on block elements in px, however, sizing up fonts in browsers usually breaks this design. Resizing fonts is commonly done with the shortcut keys Ctrl++ or Ctrl+-. So a good practice is to use em's instead.

Using px to define the width

Here is an illustrating example. Say we have a div-tag that we want to turn into a stylish date box, we may have HTML-code that looks like this:

<div class="date-box">
    <p class="month">July</p>
    <p class="day">4</p>
</div>

A simple implementation would defining the width of the date-box class in px:

* { margin: 0; padding: 0; }

p.month { font-size: 10pt; }

p.day { font-size: 24pt; font-weight: bold; }

div.date-box {
    background-color: #DD2222;
    font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
    color: white;
    width: 50px;
}

The problem

However, if we want to size the text up in our browser the design will break. The text will also bleed outside the box which is almost the same what happens with SO's design as flodin points out. This is because the box will remain the same size in width as it is locked to 50px.

Using em instead

A smarter way is to define the width in ems instead:

div.date-box {
    background-color: #DD2222;
    font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
    color: white;
    width: 2.5em;
}

* { margin: 0; padding: 0; font-size: 10pt; }

// Initial width of date-box = 10 pt x 2.5 em = 25 pt
// Will also work if you used px instead of pt

That way you have a fluid design on the date-box, i.e. the box will size up together with the text in proportion to the font-size defined for the date-box. In this example, the font-size is defined in * as 10pt and will size up 2.5 times to that font size. So when you're sizing the fonts in the browser, the box will have 2.5 times the size of that font-size.

CSS How to Properly use ems instead of pixels?

line-height: 1.4em;

Probably isn't what you want. The line-height will stay at the same computed height for the size of an ‘em’ on that element, even when you change the font-size on a descendant element.

line-height has a special case where it allows a unitless number:

line-height: 1.4;

Which makes each descendant line-height depend on its own font-size rather than the ancestor's.

Should I be defining my font-size [on a wrapper or on many element types]?

Well that rather depends on what you're trying to do. With relative font-sizes it is generally best to keep the number of declarations down to a minimum, because they nest: that is, with your blockquote { font-size: 1.5em; }, if you put a blockquote inside a blockquote you'd get a font-size of 1.5*1.5=2.25em compared to the body font size. Is that what you want? Maybe, maybe not.

where ELSE should I be using ems

Anywhere you want the size of an element to respond to the user's preferred font-size. One common example would be something like:

#maintext {
    width: 60%;
    min-width: 8em;
    max-width: 40em;
}

to try to restrict text lines to a reasonable column width when doing liquid layout.

But if you are limiting yourself to a fixed-width layout it may not make sense to make element widths font-size-dependent.

Should I use px or rem value units in my CSS?

TL;DR: use px.

The Facts

• First, it's extremely important to know that per spec, the CSS px unit does not equal one physical display pixel. This has always been true – even in the 1996 CSS 1 spec.

  CSS defines the reference pixel, which measures the size of a pixel on a 96 dpi display. On a display that has a dpi substantially different than 96dpi (like Retina displays), the user agent rescales the px unit so that its size matches that of a reference pixel. In other words, this rescaling is exactly why 1 CSS pixel equals 2 physical Retina display pixels.

  That said, up until 2010 (and the mobile zoom situation notwithstanding), the px almost always did equal one physical pixel, because all widely available displays were around 96dpi.

• Sizes specified in ems are relative to the parent element. This leads to the em's "compounding problem" where nested elements get progressively larger or smaller. For example:

    body { font-size:20px; } 
    div { font-size:0.5em; }
  

  Gives us:

    <body> - 20px
        <div> - 10px
            <div> - 5px
                <div> - 2.5px
                    <div> - 1.25px
  

• The CSS3 rem, which is always relative only to the root html element, is now supported on 99.67% of all browsers in use.

The Opinion

I think everyone agrees that it's good to design your pages to be accommodating to everyone, and to make consideration for the visually impaired. One such consideration (but not the only one!) is allowing users to make the text of your site bigger, so that it's easier to read.

In the beginning, the only way to provide users a way to scale text size was by using relative size units (such as ems). This is because the browser's font size menu simply changed the root font size. Thus, if you specified font sizes in px, they wouldn't scale when changing the browser's font size option.

Modern browsers (and even the not-so-modern IE7) all changed the default scaling method to simply zooming in on everything, including images and box sizes. Essentially, they make the reference pixel larger or smaller.

Yes, someone could still change their browser default stylesheet to tweak the default font size (the equivalent of the old-style font size option), but that's a very esoteric way of going about it and I'd wager nobody¹ does it. (In Chrome, it's buried under the advanced settings, Web content, Font Sizes. In IE9, it's even more hidden. You have to press Alt, and go to View, Text Size.) It's much easier to just select the Zoom option in the browser's main menu (or use Ctrl++/-/mouse wheel).

^{1 - within statistical error, naturally}

If we assume most users scale pages using the zoom option, I find relative units mostly irrelevant. It's much easier to develop your page when everything is specified in the same unit (images are all dealt with in pixels), and you don't have to worry about compounding. ("I was told there would be no math" – there's dealing with having to calculate what 1.5em actually works out to.)

One other potential problem of using only relative units for font sizes is that user-resized fonts may break assumptions your layout makes. For example, this might lead to text getting clipped or running too long. If you use absolute units, you don't have to worry about unexpected font sizes from breaking your layout.

So my answer is use pixel units. I use px for everything. Of course, your situation may vary, and if you must support IE6 (may the gods of the RFCs have mercy on you), you'll have to use ems anyway.

Is sizing fonts using em still relevant?

Do not specify the font-size in absolute length units for screen stylesheets. They render inconsistently across platforms and can't be resized by the User Agent (e.g browser). Keep the usage of such units for styling on media with fixed and known physical properties (e.g print)

If you will use this method, no need to calculate

You can set the font-size of the body to 62.5%(that is 62.5% of the default of 16px), which equates to 10px, or 0.625EMs. Now you can set your font-size in EMs with an easy to remember conversion, divide the px by 10.

* 12px = 1.2EMs
* 13px = 1.3EMs
* 16px = 1.6EMs
* 8px = 0.8EMs
* etc…

This makes everything SUPER easy to remember and eliminates the need for conversion tables. Of course, you will still need to use a conversion table for nested elements when using EMs, if you are not being specific in your CSS, which is a whole separate issue.

But 76% is much better and you can use this to calculate http://pxtoem.com/

Yes it's still relevant:

IE6 is still widely used and is unable to resize the fonts defined in px. => Usability issues. That alone is a no-no.

and

IE 7 and 8 don't resize text sized with pixels either, actually. They do have page zoom, but some people prefer to incease text size only.

Here's a summary of what's good and bad about font sizing in general.

Font size in css http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/213/2470522253.png

I personally like ems. Others, like Chris Coyier over at CSS-Tricks.com likes pixels. (Chris has an excellent article on the different font units).

It really comes down to personal preference.

Almost similar or related questions on SO

Should we still use em and % for defining the font-size of the website elements?

Is there really any point to using relative font sizing in CSS?

Why em instead of px?

Font size in CSS - % or em?

CSS font size: relative vs. absolute values. Which to use?

Problem with EM

Using relative instead of fixed size in CSS

Helpful online tool for px to em

http://pxtoem.com/

http://riddle.pl/emcalc/

http://convert-to.com/pixels-px-to-em-conversion.html

Convert entire site from px to em (This tool is still in development)

http://converter.elementagency.com/

EM Calculator AIR application (will work on all os)

http://jameswhittaker.com/journal/em-based-layouts-vertical-rhythm-calculator/

http://jameswhittaker.com/projects/apps/em-calculator-air-application/

Windows apps

http://www.thebrightlines.com/2009/11/16/pixem-pixel-to-em-converter/

http://www.storkas.com/Projects.aspx(go at bottom)

Pixels to Ems Conversion Table for CSS

http://jontangerine.com/silo/css/pixels-to-ems/

http://reeddesign.co.uk/test/points-pixels.html

emchart

http://aloestudios.com/tools/emchart/

http://aloestudios.com/code/emchart/

Some more articles on this issue

http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/Online/webdesign/type.html

Why use rem instead px when it's the same anyway?

So after all the research, I came to the conclusion that the only advantage of rem, is that users who use a bigger default font-size in their browser setting, will get the font-size scaled properly, while px will not scale. In other words, using rem for font-size, adds support for Accessibility to your website.

To sum up:

• rem is a way to add support for Accessibility to your website.
• Keep in mind, most users use zoom instead of font-size change in their browser and phones, because zoom easier to access.
• Browser zoom has additonal affect on em, in other words, it scales rem and px equally.
• Since 2012, rem is supported by all major browsers on desktop and mobile devices.
• Use px as fall back option for IE8 and lower.
• Although not specified by W3C, all browser across desktop and mobile devices have implemented a default font-sizeof 16px (feel free to Google yourself), which equals to 1rem/em
• To make the conversion easier between px and rem you can use html {font-size: 62.5%;} which converts 10px to 1rem

In one sentence: Use rem with px on font-size to support accessibility.

html {
    font-size: 62.5%;
}

.your_class {
    font-size: 16px;
    font-size: 1.6rem;
}

CSS em issue: avoid scaling to font-size of specific element

It is the purpose of the em unit that it is relative to the currently set font size. If you want to use an consistent form of em, use the unit 'rem'. It is relative to the root element of your page (most likely your html tag) and stands for root em.

Check out this article by Jonathan Snook if you want to learn more about it.
http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/font-size-with-rem

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