CSS font size differences between Mac and Windows

I have always developed all my web projects on my trusty iMac, and when writing external stylesheets I have always entered font sizes corresponding to what looked good on the Mac, in both IE 4.5 and Netscape 4.7.

However, it's recently occurred to me that I should probably test my pages on Windows too, and when I do, the font sizes appear *much* bigger than on the Mac. When I define 10pt text in a stylesheet on the Mac, it looks small, but in IE5 or NS4/6 on Windows it looks far too big. This creates some layout problems; what looks good on the Mac generally looks very messy on Windows.

Could someone shed some light on this for me please? Is it a general problem or some curious way I've set up one of my machines or browsers?

If it is a general problem I'll be able to write a simple CGI to present different stylesheets to Mac browsers, so no problem there, I'd just like to know if anyone else has experienced this before I go wasting my time...

Thanks!

Well, I just hate all the different browsers.
For each new browser, you gotta have a new computer.
(well, mac does a difference(you can have several different versions))But that's it!!!
If you wanna make websites, just a little bit fun, you almost got to have 4-5 "mirrors" of the same thing.
I my selfis only testing with Ie and NN on peecees.
But it's right, the most simply things looks different viewed on a mac-system????!!!!!!!!!!!

If you use "pixels"-size I guees you only have to deal with TWO "mirrors.
pt is relative to the users system's default font-size
Steffen

I'm not sure that you can use pixel sizing with fonts in CSS? As far as I am aware a pt definition (eg. '12pt') should be absolute, not relative; it should be the same size regardless of the setup of the machine.

I've investigated a bit further and, in a word processor on the Mac (Clarisworks), 8pt Arial is too small to be legible. So the problem is not with CSS (for a change)! But it appears that fonts just appear smaller in general on the Mac. Like I said earlier, I could easily come up with a workaround for this, but I'd like to know whether any other Mac users are experiencing any similiar problems.

Why does 8pt Arial look fine on Windows at 800x600 resolution, yet far too small on MacOS at the same res?

Hi cdr,

Webmonkey's columnist Steve Mulder has written a full CSS tutorial that specifically addresses your problem. Check it out at

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey...ml?tw=authoring

Cheers,
Teedeepee