Web design issues

[Sathyaish]

I have two questions:

(1) When designing applications for the Web, could you please point out
how does one take into account screen resolutions? What should be the
base that I must take for a start when I build the website?

One thing that comes to mind is to design on the lowest resolution that
the target users will have and then provide percentages for every CSS
units in all CSS selectors. Is this the right thing?

(2) How do you control font sizes? Mostly all websites I see will
resize their font if I select a different font size from the IE View ->
Text Size menu or by changing the size in Firefox.

However, some websites have their fonts fixed and they don't change
their font size no matter what you adjust your browser's font size
setting to. That is a pain in the ass, especially when their font sizes
are tiny arials. I do not want that to happen to my website. How do I
stop that? I used to think the fixed size comes from specifying an
absolute size in CSS units, like 11px or 1.05in etc. and the adjustable
font size comes from specifying a percentage or a relative CSS units
such as 1.2em, or 3ex or 40% or 'smaller' etc.

What gives?

[Paul Novitski]

Sathyaish,

Those are excellent questions you're asking, and you're in luck -- there is
a wealth of information on the internet about just these issues. Here are
just a few resources:

CSS-D listserve & wiki (cumulative knowledge archive):
http://www.css-discuss.org/
re: Font-size:
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=FontSize

Care With Font Size by W3C
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size

CSS Design: Size Matters by Todd Fahrner
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sizematters/

Elastic Design by Patrick Griffiths
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/elastic/

How to size text using ems by clagnut
http://www.clagnut.com/blog/348/

Web pages aren't printed on paper by John Allsopp
http://www.westciv.com/style_master/house/good_oil/not_paper/

Ideal line length for content by Maxdesign
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/em/


Finally, I should point out that this 'multiweb' listserve specifically
addresses multi-lingual issues in web design, so your posting is
off-topic. I strongly recommend the above-referenced CSS-D listserve,
moderated by Eric Meyer, for excellent discussion & advice on CSS
issues. Also, the WSG (Web Standards Group) listserve at
http://webstandardsgroup.org/

Regards,
Paul