Topic: The 'em' value is CSS? (Page 1 of 1)

I have picked up a book in order to fully learn CSS. All is going well except one thing. I am having trouble understanding how the 'em' value works. I know its used favoribly over the other values and I would like to learn how to use it right. Can anyone explain for me?

+ Mike +

http://24ways.org/advent/an-explanation-of-ems

An em is the width of the capital letter M in a particular fontset. It's a relative measurement.

It's preferable when you consider the end user's ability to control his own viewing experience. For example, you set the size of your body text to 1em, your h3's to 1.5em, your h2's to 2em, etc. The user can increase or decrease the overall size of the text in his browser based on his comfort, but your text and headers will remain the same size relative to each other.

You can also apply em sizes to other elements on the page, such as navigation bars or columns, and their apparent sizes will increase and decrease relatively, as well.

Thanks alot guys!

+ Mike +

Oh sure, I go through all the trouble to explain it and Jason beats me by seconds with nothing but a link.



Edit: Stupid lowercase-p slimies ...

(Edited by Wes on 12-24-2005 00:36)

Yeah, he's like that ( )