On one of my sites I use ZURB foundation for layouting as it really helpful to make the website responsive, however, I need to set to set an absolutely minimum width to be 700px. Meaning that the browser should not do any scaling after the screen is smaller than 700px.
What is the correct way to do it?
Any help or guidance is much appreciated.
For small screen sizes, Foundation uses a max-width of 40em, which is equivalent to 640px. In the Foundation css file, you'll need to find all instances of media queries that define a max-width of 40em, and change the value to 43.75em, which translates to 700px. To maintain consistency, I would suggest sticking to using em.
The "medium" media queries kick in when the window width is greater than or equal to 40.0625em (641px), so you'll have to change these to 43.813em (701px).
Here's an interesting article that explains why Foundation uses em and why it's a good idea to use it in general: Zurb em use
Another website that allows you to convert em to px and vice-versa: px to em conversion
Related
I'm finally learning responsive design and I need to know the best practices for em and percentage units of measurement. If I were to set the font-size of the body to be 10px, would I run into problems down the line declaring all font-sizes em's (1em = 10px, 2.5em = 25px, etc.)?
Also, when is the correct time to use em units vs percentages? Are em units mainly for typography, and then percentages would be used for sizing, margin, padding, etc.?
I love the idea that I can scale font-size proportionally at media queries by changing the body font-size, but I don't think I would want my layout and spacing to shift based on the size of text (or do I?).
It is best practice to allow the browser's font size setting to affect your design–avoid setting the font-size of the body in pixels.
rem units are great for ensuring that everything scales proportionally to the browser font-size. em units are calculated based on the font-size of the parent element so they can become trickier to use when elements are nested. rem is always relative to the font-size of the html element (the root element). If you assume 1rem = 16px and build everything relative to that, then even if the user has set the browser so that 1rem = 20px, for example, then the entire design will scale up accordingly.
With responsive design, it is best practice to define media query "breakpoints" at screen widths where the content starts to become unusable (rather than at arbitrary widths based on popular devices). When your whole site is scaled up or down by the browser's font-size change, you will want the break points to also respect that font-size. However, since Safari treats rem media queries differently than other browsers, it is best to use em for media queries.
ok, first if you want using responsive design, i suggest strongly to you to use a framework like bootstrap or fondation to have a responsive design. You seem newbie in that way and responsivity is a bunch of css and preprocessor for most complicate cases.
But, to answer to your question, we dont resize fonts in media queries for most cases. Set per exemple your fonts in rem. So you must test on many devices your responsivity. By layout you must probably mean divs. Best practice is viweport vw (width) and vh (height) except if you want a proportionnal measure inside annother element. In that case, use %. Rem is better than em cause it is root em. The true size of a font difined in html. When the screen become too small on a device, you must collapsing your menu, and the text on your site must goes down in a div. I can continue like this a while, but like i said, use a framework, faster learning and faster development. Most devs like me use frameworks for their clients.
I've been having a play around using em's/rem's today on a new site and have several things i'd like to discuss/ask on here.
For many years I have been totally a pixel based person with a few percentages thrown in when required.
I keep reading that em's and rem's are "the way" the web should be. Fair Enough which is why I gave it a go today.
So, first things first. Are the point of using em's/rem's for dimensions literally just for changing the dimensions of things relative to the main font size?
If so, then for what situation would you change the main font size? I have always set mine to be 16px and worked with it.
I located a Sass mixin that allows me to specify in pixels my dimensions for any property and it outputs it with rem and a pixel based fallback. I tweaked it to my liking first though.
So I then started building the site using the rem mixin for all my dimensions (margin, padding and a few heights). Yes everything scales when I alter the main font size but again, same question as number 2 here.
I used Compass Susy to set my grid up and used em's to specify it's settings, (I normally would have chosen pixels). I set the grid style within Susy to be the magic-grid which makes the grid static when the browser is wider than the grid but entirely flexible on the inside.
Surely everything that I have read about the benefits of using em's can be done using media queries? What do you guys do and most importantly what do the mainstream sites use?
Right, the next two questions are to do with images. I came across two situations today where using em's/rem's with an image somewhere in the equation resulted in a problem.
5a. I had an h2 set to inline block and added padding around and then the rem equivalent of 45px padding on the right. I set the line-height to a unitless value of 1.3. I then set an image to be the background of the h2 to appear over to the right to appear in the padding-right. At the standard base font size of 16px all is fine. However I increase or decrease that font size and the top and bottom of the image crop off. So question 2 again. I see why the image is getting cropped but it's how to deal with the relationship between em's/rem's and images that is bugging me.
5b. I had a div with a height set at the rem equivalent of 200px in height. I then added an image into there which had a height of 200px. The width of the image was set using the susy mixin span-columns to a specific column width and the height was set to auto. When the font size was altered I either ended up with an image too tall or too short. What is the best thing to do in this situation?
I was looking through some of the compass mixins available and for example this one:
#mixin pretty-bullets($bullet-icon, $width: image-width($bullet-icon), $height: image-height($bullet-icon), $line-height: 18px, $padding: 14px) {
margin-left: 0;
li {
padding-left: $padding;
background: image-url($bullet-icon) no-repeat ($padding - $width) / 2 ($line-height - $height) / 2;
list-style-type: none;
}
}
I can't add in all my em/rem stuff in there?
I think the over arching questions are:
Why are em's/rem's required in the first place?
How do you work with them in relation to images?
Any thoughts guys?
There is a lot to say about your post and it would probably be best to start with a few basics:
Why use em or rem units?
Em & rem units are used to size things relatively.
Em units: An em unit in a browser changes relative to it's parent's font-size, whether that is a span, p, div, body or html element. So when using em units for font sizes and for width or height, those dimensions will depend on the current parent's font-size.
Rem units: An rem unit in a browser is relative to the base font-size of the document. If you set that to 16px then 1rem is 16px, 2rem is 32px and so on. This means that you can change the scale of the entire document at a single point and anything that is using that relative measurement is going to increase/decrease accordingly.
The Point: These measurements are 'relative' so the answer to the question, "Why use em or rem units?", is for the em unit, simply use them when you want to size an element in a web page relative to it's parent and for the rem, use them when you want to size an element relative to the document.
That's a simple approach but it puts web design in the right context for the next question...
How should em & rem units be used in design and layout?
The answer to this question is also multifaceted but to put it in simple terms using em, rem or any 'relative' measurement to describe elements in your design is a move away from static pixel based design.
For the most part em, rem & percentages are used for creating flexible layouts and flexible layouts have a whole different approach to the web and using elements within them than pixel based design. For instance, if you have a container that needs to expand relative to the document width and it has an image in it, you'll probably want that image to resize along with the container or situate itself differently depending on the available space.
Here's where we get into 'Responsive' designs and layouts in an attempt to make 'Adaptive' sites & applications and also where Media Queries and other techniques come in.
Personally I use em's almost exclusively for type and margins & padding of elements. Dimensions I describe in percentages and then it's almost always only the widths. There's only so much you can control in a world where the devices, device dimensions and pixel ratios keep doubling every year.
So to sum up, sort of...
1) If you need static dimensions just stick with pixels. There is generally no real benefit to using relative measurements if you need specific fixed dimensions.
2) Em's & rem's are one of many tools and serve their purpose as other tools (pixels) serve theirs. They are a great tool and worth mastering so use them when you need to but only when the problem requires relative sizing.
3) You may want to split those Compass Susy questions into a more specific post and provide some example if you want help with that.
I hope that helps even if it doesn't answer all of the questions you have here.
Cheers
Ems/rems are used to make the site adaptive to different settings on the client end. My browser settings can increase or decrease the font size on your site, and using em/rem allows you to adapt to my settings. It's a trade off - as with everything else in web design - between your pixel-exact control and your willingness to design around change and user control. There is no right answer - but I like to remind myself that the entire technology of the web is weighted towards user control, and any attempt for me to be pixel-anal is fighting against the core technologies.
Ems/rems can be used in media-queries to set breakpoint widths, but they solve a different part of the adaptability formula - font size, rather than screen size. Your Susy grid can now adapt to both at once!
Images are a pain for any kind of responsive/adaptive design work. The same solutions you might use for a fluid layout will help with an em-based layout. Common solutions involve the background-size property (Compass has a mixin for it) and setting html images to a max-width of 100%. See CSS-Tricks Rundown of Handling Flexible Media. I have use this fluid-media mixin to handle the "intrinsic ratios" approach for background images and the like.
But, more often than not, I find a way to design with fewer images. I like that the technology pushes me towards simplicity in that area - so it doesn't bother me.
I'm redesigning my site because looks awful on different resolutions (apart devices), most guides and tutorials rely on % and em than fixed values. I'm still learning this so I'm reading everything around.
Thought this would solve the question with different display sizes but again: we have to craft some more CSS for fix some specific issues.
If I need to add media-queries for extra display sizes, why use % then? Do use % really reduce coding? Is ok need to add some extra css for some sizes or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for any advice!
The purpose of using em sizes is to allow the base your design off of the user's choice of font size. I may use a larger font size because I have a huge monitor and poor eye sight, while someone else might prefer a smaller font. By using em units, your design will accommodate both of our font preferences and resize accordingly instead of forcing the font size to a given standard (eg. "12 point font").
In a similar manner, percent (%) units allow your design to respond to different browser sizes. Used in conjunction with em units, this will allow text-based elements to respond to arbitrary font size choices, and layout elements to respond to arbitrary browser sizes.
It is perfectly acceptable to design a single responsive design for all media types. Media queries are intended when you want different display styles on different devices, not to "support" different display sizes. An example would be to use serif fonts on print media and sans-serif fonts on display media, since usabilities studies have shown that these font faces are preferred for these sorts of media.
Furthermore, it allows you to do custom styling for some situations like mobile devices, where you may want to consider that the user has a limited amount of bandwidth and maybe cut down on extra images. Or if you want to display your content in a completely different layout for the microscopic screen afforded by certain phones.
% allows your site to be responsive to the user's method of viewing. Let's say you have a div that's at 100%. It'll fill the entire section, regardless if it's on a phone or desktop.
It should be okay to add extra CSS for sizes as well. As far as I know, you can have some elements display in % and some with a fixed px value, although they might conflict depending on how the page is setup or what it is being viewed with.
For example.
Your website header have the width of 950px; But in a mobile device, it may fit at 450px;
So, you use media-query to reposition some elements and handle some size issues and set the header width to 450px;
But, if you use % values, you can set your header div to have 100% of width base in its parent. So you can only change the body or some container div width, the all childs going to adapt.
Diana,
I am glad I came across this question. I literally just uploaded my first responsive design which is 90% based off of percentages when it comes to font-size and widths.
Check out the below:
http://www.noxinnovations.com/portfolio/responsive/
Obviously, it doesn't look amazing, and the image looks way out of place... But do me a favor and resize your browser window, by slowly making it smaller and smaller. I did that by setting a percentage width!
Trust me, I tried doing this responsive design test with pixels, and it didn't turn out too well. The percentage width ensures that regardless of the resolution and or pixel dimensions (per se) the design will always cater to the size of the screen. Also, I did not have to use one CSS3 Media Query, but I would highly suggest using CSS3 Media Queries only when you need them.
In my opinion, I should probably have a Media Query for a larger screen.
I hope this helps you as much as it has helped me!
Thank you,
Aaron
I like Skeleton but I have a few questions:
Why use pixel sizes when it could all be achieved using relative/em sizes?
Is this because it's the only reliable way to achieve x-browser compatibility? .. as using em sizes feels more appropriate / future proof
Does relative sizing and reactive grid design really matter given that most browser are pretty smart at zooming now and people can just set their default zoom level?
Didn't want to decompose this into separate questions because Im trying to get the professional community's high level view of this framework's (mis)use of CSS best practices.
Finally if you have alternatives that you think tackle things more appropriately, do please share (with reasons!).
Pixel sizes still matter: 960 pixels wide is quite a standard, iPad landscape width is 1024px, etc... It seems that a webpage width of about 1000px is becoming a defacto standard for simple content website (makes sense when some screens can stretch a good 1900 or 2400px wide)... These width can not be expressed through em, because em is not fixed by definition. Em has its use when you're inside a fixed-sized frame and you want to space elements relatively to the font you choose.
Very few people can use their browser's zoom, and even fewer people bother to change the default zoom value. So you should aim for the most standard, ie 1000px wide, and they will cope with it.
I'm currently using the 960 grid system framework for my CSS project and I've decided to work in their suggested text.css file. I notice their suggested font sizes are all in pixels, wouldn't it be better to use percents instead? Why do you think they've gone with pixels?
If you use 960 in your projects, what do you recommend?
Thanks
It's odd, I have always been told to use em for font-size, in regard of portability issues.
You can use a percentage to define a font, but it's not as precise as utilizing a fixed pixel specification or a fluid em
font-size:30px; --> it will always be 30px no matter what
font-size:2em; --> it scales up and down if the screen increases or decreases in size
If you are using a fixed-width column layout, which has a total of 960px, hence the name 960 grid, then yes, its easier if you just go for fixed pixel sizes to make sure everything fits fine.
You should experiment using em anyway as its quite handy