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

Use CSS Variables

No one has mentioned CSS variables yet, and this approach worked best for me, so:

Let's say you've got a column on your page that is 100% of the width of a mobile user's screen, but has a max-width of 800px, so on desktop there's some space on either side of the column. Put this at the top of your page:

And now you can use that variable (instead of the built-in vw unit) to set the size of your font. E.g.

p {
  font-size: calc( var(--column-width) / 100 );
}

It's not a pure CSS approach, but it's pretty close.