style="width:xxx"

[ZiggyRingTail]

Hi all,

Is there a way to specifiy style="width:xx" so the unit of measure (xx in this case) is characters and not pixels?

Thanks

 

[onpnt]

what characters would you be putting in there exactly?

from what you gave I would say no, but there may be more details. like scripting involvment maybe?

I can tell you what W3C says

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1#width

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[glenmac]

I believe what you are looking for is "em" it is the width of text characters.

Glen

http://www.lantzvillecomputers.ca

 

[ChrisHunt]

Well, sort of. An em is the average width of text characters (it used to be the width of an "m" character, hence the name). You might get three "i" characters, or just one "w" into a 2em-wide box. Of course this doesn't apply to monospaced fonts [tt]like this, where all characters have the same width.[/tt]

-- Chris Hunt

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

http://www.napitalia.org.uk

http://www.leicesteryha.org.uk

 

[ZiggyRingTail]

Hi all,

Thanks for the response. I'm not sure I understand what "em" is and how to use it. Is it intended to replace the "px" in style="width:150px"?

Thanks

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

>> Is it intended to replace the "px" in style="width:150px"?

It is. An "em" is exactly the width of 1 'm' character in whatever font you're using (thus the name 'em'). It stems from the printing trade, and made it over into the 20th century when everything got computerised. You also see references to em-dashes (like elongated hyphens) - these are dashes that are also the same width as a letter 'm'

Hope this clarifies things,

Dan

 

[ZiggyRingTail]

Thanks to everyone for your responses, that's exactly what I need!

Ziggy

 

[rkmarcks]

Although it appears problem is solved, might I add one last thing? The available units of measurement in CSS are the following:

RELATIVE
em (height of elements font as explained above)
ex (height of the letter "x&quot
px (pixels relative to canvas resolution)

ABSOLUTE
in (inches)
cm (centimeters)
mm (millimeters)
pt (points, 1pt = 1/72 inch)
pc (picas, 1pc = 12pts)

Most literature recommends use of em over any other measurement and strongly dicourages use of absolute measurements. This is primarily for puposes of accesibility. I personally have found the 'em' unit to be perhaps the easiest to work with, although that's probably a matter of what one gets used to.

RKM

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

Incidentally, isn't 100% the same as 1em, and (for example) 80% the same as 0.8em?

Dan