font sized with em not resizing

[spazticrexe]

I have having an issue where I have specified a font size with em, but when I go to resize the fonts on the page (in IE7 using the View>Text Size>Larger or Largest) Everything on the page with the exception of the text controlled by the following css resizes correctly:

#header #breadcrumb #returnToSearchResults 
{
    font: normal .85em/1em Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif ;
}
#header #breadcrumb strong 
{
    font: bold .85em/1em Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif ;
}
#header #breadcrumb a, #returnToSearchResults a 
{
    font: bold 1.08em/1.1em Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif ;
}

here is the corresponding html:

<div id="header">
          <div id="breadcrumb"><a title="Chapter Outline" href="outline.html">Nature, Humanity, and History, to 3500 B.C.E.</a>
          </div>
     <h1>Chapter Introduction</h1>
     </div>

[spazticrexe]

I'm just looking for if anyone has some insight into what the problem might be.

[dennishall]

Hi spazticrexe:
Remove your line heights and declaire them seperately as such:

font: normal .85em Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif ;
line-height: 1em;

[spazticrexe]

No dice. I've also tried breaking each of the parts of the font tag into their individual tags with no luck.

Is there a chance that where the text comes from could have a bearing on how this would work? The text in question is generated, though I'm not sure how - another person on the team works on it.

[dennishall]

Hi spazticrexe:
The fonts you are using are not special - they are web safe and standard, this means that no-one made custom fonts unless your font person is doing really strange things (doubt it).

Does this issue occur in browsers other than IE. The reason you need to check this is because Standard Browsers (FF, Chrome, Safari, etc) read the True Type Fonts (TTF) while IE can only read Embedded Open Type fonts (EOT) and Open Type Fonts (OTF).

What this means is that you will see different results between IE and FF etc... as they seek out the fonts and default to another type when the font is not found.

Best of Luck

[spazticrexe]

What I meant by generated is that it is pulled out of xml and only put on the page if it is necessary. I don't suspect that this would have any bearing on the size-ability, but I am not the person who works on that part of our project.

We are using YUI for some items, so I am starting to look at if their css may be influencing things. If/when I figure this out, I'll post the fix.

Until then, I am still open to suggestions.

[dennishall]

Actually, even if your XML is supplying the paths to the css or website, the TTF, OTF, EOT scenario is not overridden. The two technologies typically serve different purposes.

XML may attribute a styling issue in the case of the fonts, if you are using the XSL aspect. So if you choose to investing the XML side, look for the XSL styling. Some free products such as MS XML Notepad 2007 are able to show you XSL output of you XML file.

Good Luck.