Tutorial 22: The Font of Foulness, Part I: Size Matters
Relative Font Sizes using BIG and SMALL
As if the whole FONT mess wasn't enough, Netscape also came
up with two elements called BIG and SMALL. BIG is
exactly the same as FONT with a SIZE attribute
of +1 and SMALL is the same as FONT with a
SIZE attribute of -1. The analogy can be seen in the
following example:
<TABLE>
<TR>
<TD><FONT SIZE="-2">Foobar -2</FONT></TD>
<TD>
<SMALL><SMALL>
Foobar SS
</SMALL></SMALL>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD><FONT SIZE="-1">Foobar -1</FONT></TD>
<TD>
<SMALL>
Foobar S
</SMALL>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD><FONT SIZE="3">Foobar 3</FONT></TD>
<TD>
Foobar
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD><FONT SIZE="+1">Foobar +1</FONT></TD>
<TD>
<BIG>
Foobar B
</BIG>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD><FONT SIZE="+2">Foobar +2</FONT></TD>
<TD>
<BIG><BIG>
Foobar BB
</BIG></BIG>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD><FONT SIZE="+3">Foobar +3</FONT></TD>
<TD>
<BIG><BIG><BIG>
Foobar BBB
</BIG></BIG></BIG>
</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD><FONT SIZE="+4">Foobar +4</FONT></TD>
<TD>
<BIG><BIG><BIG><BIG>
Foobar BBBB
</BIG></BIG></BIG></BIG>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
| Foobar -2 |
Foobar SS
|
| Foobar -1 |
Foobar S
|
| Foobar 3 |
Foobar
|
| Foobar +1 |
Foobar B
|
| Foobar +2 |
Foobar BB
|
| Foobar +3 |
Foobar BBB
|
| Foobar +4 |
Foobar BBBB
|
These elements are terrible because you usually need to nest them
pretty deep to get the desired effects. They are useless (since you
can do the same things with FONT) and add huge amounts of
clutter to your documents. Happily, You can deal with BIG and
SMALL exactly as you would with FONT and relative sizes,
which is what we'll do in the next section. But keep this lesson about
BIG and SMALL close to your heart: Avoid them like the
plague.
