Font scaling based on width of container

Question

I\'m having a hard time getting my head around font scaling.

I currently have a website with a body font-size of 100%. 100% of what though? This seems t

Answer 1

My own solution, jQuery-based, works by gradually increasing the font size until the container gets a big increase in height (meaning it got a line break).

It's pretty simple, but works fairly well, and it is very easy to use. You don't have to know anything about the font being used, everything is taken care of by the browser.

You can play with it on http://jsfiddle.net/tubededentifrice/u5y15d0L/2/

The magic happens here:

var setMaxTextSize=function(jElement) {
    // Get and set the font size into data for reuse upon resize
    var fontSize=parseInt(jElement.data(quickFitFontSizeData)) || parseInt(jElement.css("font-size"));
    jElement.data(quickFitFontSizeData, fontSize);

    // Gradually increase font size until the element gets a big increase in height (i.e. line break)
    var i = 0;
    var previousHeight;
    do
    {
        previousHeight=jElement.height();
        jElement.css("font-size", "" + (++fontSize) + "px");
    }
    while(i++ < 300 && jElement.height()-previousHeight < fontSize/2)

    // Finally, go back before the increase in height and set the element as resized by adding quickFitSetClass
    fontSize -= 1;
    jElement.addClass(quickFitSetClass).css("font-size", "" + fontSize + "px");

    return fontSize;
};