Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Since getting 45.1.1 version, my font size is too small. Is it true that you now use a pixel size rather than the printing industry "point" size ?

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 16 views
  • Last reply by Zenos

Linda_in_Dallas
Linda_in_Dallas
more options

The printing industry and word processing software has always used the standard POINT size for fonts. Yes, a 12 Point size in each different font will change but that is a function of the font selected. To achieve the desired size for Comic Sans Font I must now go to a "size" of 17 or 18 on my display when composing messages. When they are sent, they appear to change to whatever size is choosen in the Options for HTML, i.e., Medium or Large, etc. Responses in other font problems led me to consider that the SIZE is now a "pixel" size and found that increasing it helped my own problem.

If so, understanding this might help others as well.

The printing industry and word processing software has always used the standard POINT size for fonts. Yes, a 12 Point size in each different font will change but that is a function of the font selected. To achieve the desired size for Comic Sans Font I must now go to a "size" of 17 or 18 on my display when composing messages. When they are sent, they appear to change to whatever size is choosen in the Options for HTML, i.e., Medium or Large, etc. Responses in other font problems led me to consider that the SIZE is now a "pixel" size and found that increasing it helped my own problem. If so, understanding this might help others as well.

All Replies (1)

Zenos
Zenos
more options

We have always used pixels, in line with w3c recommendations (e.g. http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/playit.asp?filename=playcss_font-size&preval=10px). The 'e' in 'email' stands for 'electronic'; why should standards based on the conventions of a paper-oriented industry apply here?

Please explain to me how point sizes make sense if I view your email message on a) a smartphone with a small screen, and b) on a projector using a 2m wide screen? The important factor is making it comfortable and legible for the recipient; how you saw it when you composed it is almost entirely irrelevant. In my two examples here, we would reasonably expect the text size to be scaled suitably. Points are irrelevant.

Points and other absolute sizes are fine if you're working with paper, where you have near-absolute control over paper size, font, size and face. Even then you can't guarantee that I will print it on the size of paper you had in mind (US letter vs A4 for instance) and that I have the exact fonts installed that you used.

What paper size do you imagine an email gets printed on? Where is that defined? There is nowhere in email to set a paper size, nor absolute line lengths. Points are meaningless in such a situation.

If you insist on imposing a specific font size on your hapless correspondents, I suggest you investigate the Stationery add-on where you can create and apply templates and set parameters such as size, face, justification, margins and more. But your correspondents are free to ignore or override your settings.