Readable text (again)
Jeffrey Zeldman has just argued the case for specifying web type in pixels, in A list apart: fear of style sheets 4. He says only two things always work: (1) Use pixels (not points, not ems, not percentages, not keywords) to specify your font sizes. Or: (2) Use nothing. He makes some good points, but he doesn’t convince me altogether.
Buried in the third page of the article is this: If you can get away with a looser type of design (as you can, for instance, in a personal diary, or an academic paper, or in the body text of a zine like ALA), so much the better. Most of us have to size the elements in our layouts, and most of us designers like it that way. Ah! Time for the designers to loosen up. Let the text flow! (I’ll try to keep it loose and flowing here, with font-size: 80%).