Last modified: 2008-08-27 20:57:59 UTC
The font sizes applicable to #bodyContent are: body { font: x-small sans-serif; } #globalWrapper { font-size: 127%; } This doesn't make any sense. First, why scale it down only to scale back up? Second, the resulting size is 95.3% (one pixel smaller with typical settings) of the user-selected default in at least firefox; i.e. it's smaller for no good reason. The conservative solution would be to change 127% to 133.3%, which will result in article text being the same size as the font specified in the browser's settings.
Cross-browser compatibility... The act of scaling down, then scaling up inside of a wrapper is done to ensure consistency in the text size of the web page across different browsers which render differently. As for changing the scale. I'd consider that a serious regression, that size has been the way it is for quite some time now, years even. If you change the font size now billions of articles are suddenly going to start looking differently. And possibly even in a negative way. If some sites don't like the current font size, then they can fix it with their own site css. Recommend WONTFIX or INVALID.
The root cause is because IE and Netscape used different default font size. Gabriel Wicke (I think) came up with this easy and working hack, we are not going to change it.
But why make the size smaller? (it's also smaller in IE) It's a one-pixel difference - you get more variation by different users' browser preferences. How is it a "regression" if it makes it follow the font size the users have actually put in their browser settings?