The opposite of one man's "tiny-tiny" is another man's "10 lines per screen" in humongous "screw-you-,-i-have-a-retina-mbp" designer typeface.
The solution is there, but it's not working. The CSS 'pt' size measure was supposed to address this exact issue, but in reality it doesn't. "Reality" being the most of Windows world that still runs at 96 DPI (dots-per-inch), regardless of whether one has 1080 scan lines on 12" display or 768 - on 20" one. What's twice as unfortunate is that Windows added mainstream support for higher DPIs starting with Vista. So, in theory, if I were to get a high-res laptop, it'd come with a manufacturer's .inf that sets my DPI to 120 if my display is physically small. In practice - na-da. I've seen this done only on selected ThinkPads, but that's it.
The real solution here is to base all font size calculations off the default font in the user's browser (which the user can change). If everyone did this, you would be able to enjoy a consistent font size across most sites. It will probably never happen though.
I just wish all sites used something like the CSS3 rem (root ems) unit so we could at least make it a bit easier for the user to have a say in the font size the site uses.
Ohh, thank you so much. I knew of the upcoming viewport-dimension-relative units, but I never heard of rem.. I already use em wherever I can, but that sometimes can get a bit hairy when nesting lots of things, so I often wished something like this existed without realizing it does. Thanks again!
The solution is there, but it's not working. The CSS 'pt' size measure was supposed to address this exact issue, but in reality it doesn't. "Reality" being the most of Windows world that still runs at 96 DPI (dots-per-inch), regardless of whether one has 1080 scan lines on 12" display or 768 - on 20" one. What's twice as unfortunate is that Windows added mainstream support for higher DPIs starting with Vista. So, in theory, if I were to get a high-res laptop, it'd come with a manufacturer's .inf that sets my DPI to 120 if my display is physically small. In practice - na-da. I've seen this done only on selected ThinkPads, but that's it.