IE Font Size Problems
There are a number of problems associated with IE from the webmasters perspective, but the sizing of fonts is a big one - a font size inappropriately offset from what is declared can cause big problems with layout.I had decided to use CSS declarations to gain a universally appropriate font size in my design and I was really thrown back when I saw the results in IE. The solution, for my machine, had to do with the fact that my system came shipped with 120dpi fonts installed instead of 96dpi fonts, which is the default. Of course, most web sites are written with 72 dpi images for screen elements, but that's a whole different problem all together (image scaling has been a problem with widescreen dell laptops for some time, but now IE7 defaults to image scaling by default).
For my system, to update the settings appropriately, I had to go into display properties, system tab, advanced button, and then change the DPI from 120 to 96. Of course, a restart is required before IE will show the difference.
Bigger Problem for Webmasters
Of course, changing the setting on my machine shows me what most people see on their desktops - which is what I was hoping for. This problem does point out a bigger problem for web developers though. We all know that IE has the biggest market share, and despite the fact that we all develop using firefox, lobby for better standards assimilation, and do our best to work around IE specific display issues - we do so with a typical IE user in mind. We, for the most part, ignore the sub-population of IE users that have some sort of laptop-specific scaling issue. I would bet that most laptop users will see the same thing that I saw this morning - and few of them will do anything to fix it.As a webmaster, and a web designer, it's my job to support these people in the same manner that I support netscape or safari users. Unfortunately, there's no easy way that I can think of to determine the end user's DPI level. I think the best I can do is query for the dimensions of a fixed element, and push out a different CSS base font size accordingly, but that implies a scripted environment and javascript.
IE7 Font Sizes Too Large Feedback
