Comment by simoncion
5 months ago
> Firefox automatically scales it up to 12px...
Only if you've told it to. My Firefox settings have "Minimum Font Size" set to "None". Perhaps scaling up to 12px is a default? (Edit: Also, are you sure you're not thinking of 12pt? IIRC, points are DPI-independent units and (AIUI) the traditional way of specifying font sizes in computerized typography.)
Despite my age, I still have eyes that are good enough to easily read the font sizes you're complaining about. A hugely important part of a User Agent is that it provide overrides for site design choices that the Agent's user has decided will benefit them. It's a good thing that UAs let folks like you choose a minimum-possible font size. It's an equally good thing that UAs let folks like me choose to see the choices that designer made that others criticize.
Pixels are in fact DPI-independent too, the CSS spec makes them exactly 0.75 of a point, which comes out to 96 DPI regardless of the device. Devices are then free to scale that up or down as they like: phones typically scale it down a touch because they’re held closer to the eyes.
What a bloody confusing way to define a unit of measure called a "pixel". 1px should be one device pixel, and 1pt should be 1/72 of an inch on the device!
Sheesh.
Eh, logical pixels have been a thing since at least X11, which is where we got that 96DPI thing to begin with. It certainly is confusing that they’re named the same thing though.
> ...points are DPI-independent units...
To be clear, this is a confusingly- (and perhaps incorrectly-) worded way to say "At a given point size, a particular glyph from a particular font is supposed to be the same size on the output device, regardless of its physical size or number of pixels.".
Yup meant to say 12pt, sorry.
Nothing to apologize for. I didn't even notice until a bit after I wrote up my reply. It has been several hot minutes since I've had to know the difference between the two.