Absolute terms include inches, centimeters, millimeters, picas, and points. Unfortunately, the display medium is almost never known precisely as users have different resolutions, monitor sizes, viewing distances, etc. So let s try a little math to see why some pages display bigger text under Internet Explorer 5. Now, we look and see what the user has set as her resolution. Therefore a site that specifies a 12-point font would have their text scaled to a font size of 16.
Some authors specify font sizes in points, while others use pixels.
Those that use pixels or relative measurements work best in modern standards-compliant Web browsers such as Internet Explorer 5. Some sites don t specify a font size in points or pixels. In those cases, we look at the font size setting in the Internet Explorer 5 preferences. 16 is the default size chosen to maintain compatibility with other modern browsers, addressing the concerns of Web authors. When those sites specify a relative size for type, we adjust relative to the font size you set, but at larger increments between sizes, because they are specified with numbers between 1 and 6, instead of percentages or pixel or point sizes.