Use cm on CSS?

Question

Hi everybody, This is sort of a cultural question. As a European, I'm much more familiar with cm. Therefore, I write much better code on css using them instead of pixels. I's just so much easier for me. So my question is... Are pixels prefered at a professional level? If so, is there any reason for this? Thanks!

Answer 1 · 2014-10-05T19:30:30Z

October 5, 2014 7:30pm

Victor;

As a general rule use relative units for main body text that users are going to have to read a lot of (so they'll want to be able to read it comfortably); Absolute for text that has to be sized to match other elements on the page that are sized in pixels, such as images.

For relative, ‘%’ and ‘em’ are equally good.

For absolute, always use ‘px’.

If you look into some of the SASS courses here on Treehouse, they give a CSS function to convert pixels to em values so you don't have to do math calculations for every property:

@function em($target, $context: $base__font-size) {
    @return ($target / $context) * 1em;
}

I believe the principle is covered in a CSS course or two, and then the SASS courses show how to implement the funciton. Great stuff.

Just my thoughts,

Ken

Answer 2 · 2014-10-05T19:21:28Z

October 5, 2014 7:21pm

Hi Victor,

I don't think you'll ever see professional web designers use cm or inch. Pixels, em's, rem's (em's & rem's are a measurement based on pixels).

Computer screens use pixels for measurement, that fact alone is reason enough to use pixels in your code.
You will end up doing lots of math if you were attempting to code in cm.

Pixels aren't actually a European, American or Asian thing BTW, it's not like the metric measurement we use here versus the imperial measurement used elsewhere. Pixels are the standard for web designers throughout the world.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3 · 2014-10-05T19:57:40Z

October 5, 2014 7:57pm

Hi Wayne, Ken,

Thanks for your replies. Yeah, I figured pixels were the standard in CS & programming. I think that course is a great idea indeed. I live in the US now and have these issues too with feet, pounds, etc... lol I guess it's just getting used to it too,

Cheers,

Victor

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Use cm on CSS?

3 Answers

Ken Alger

Ken Alger

Wayne Priestley

Wayne Priestley

victor sagrista lopez

victor sagrista lopez

James Barnett

James Barnett