[Supercalifragilistic]

Why do some people use a percentage as a font size?

[Advertisements]

Using percentages for fonts and other dimension sizes helps to make your page a little more flexible. Whether to use percentages alone for fonts depends on whether you need to have a print friendly page, too. Pts or ems are better for that. Pixels really don't allow that close of control over fonts.

Font sizes depends on browser, O/S and font used.

Ron

[Major Payne]

Using percentages for fonts and other dimension sizes helps to make your page a little more flexible. Whether to use percentages alone for fonts depends on whether you need to have a print friendly page, too. Pts or ems are better for that. Pixels really don't allow that close of control over fonts.

Font sizes depends on browser, O/S and font used.

Ron

[david3rd]

Also, studies have shown that using 76% as the base font size results in the actual font produced being as close to exactly the same size on most browsers.

[Greenstone]

As I think Major Payne was saying, people use font sizes to maintain perspective. If you want your header text to be larger than your subtitle, you'd use percentages. That way your site will maintain consistency, even when users have different text sizes with their browsers.