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A typical problem is the following: when a user has the viewport at a size that makes the outer container 999 pixels wide, if the first column is 60% and the second is 40%, IE 6 will always calculate the two columns as 600 and 400 pixels and as a result, the two will not fit (600+400 = 1 more than 999) and it will drop the second column. This is obviously not intended behavior, and in a world where we still have to use floats for columns (I can't wait for display:table support across all browsers), it's important to work around this problem. I used to give my last column 1 less percent (in this example, it would have 39% instead of 40%, but this would usually result in columns that don't quite fill up the container. Of late I have been giving the last column .4 less percent (in this example, 39.6%), which seems to work perfectly. Browsers will calculate this width and round up, but it will still fit even with an odd container width like 999px and I won't have to worry about dropped columns.

However, (gasp) IE has a problem with ems. Resizing text from medium (default) to large in IE5/6 would lead to a huge increase in font size rather than the gradual one expected. So another selector is needed to get IE to behave: html{ font-size:100%; }

Jon, good article and very useful chartm but your text sizing method has one major drawback. If elements with font-sizes set in em’s are nested, i.e with lists, these elements inherit the font size. Therefore each child element will be 0.75em (or 75%) of the previous one: See an example here. (Would have posted the code put it was coming out really ugly!) I would recommend against using that method and setting the global font size in the body tag i.e. 'font-size:75%' for 12px. Then only setting different font-sizes where necessary.

Thanks Will, interesting point, but that is solved with a simple font-size:1em on the first child. Retaining the default ensures that even images are sized correctly in ems. IE (surprise) will compute incorrectly against a parent length equivalent to 12px. My preference born out by some minor but painful computed size errors in complex layouts is not to adjust the body, and only set font size where necessary for specific elements.