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Px vs % (caution: longread)

Disclaimer: please don't mind my English, I'm not native. So I've been learning coding for 19 days already and today I uploaded my first somewhat sizeable HTML+CSS code on SoloLearn (I'd be happy if you check it out and comment on what I need to improve) and encountered a problem: my svg figures just wasn't there when I opened this code from my phone. After a small research I realized the reason was that I used px instead of % when creating circle, rectangle, etc. and since my phone's screen is less wide than my laptop's screen it was just off the screen. I had to lower the px values of the figures from 400 to 100 so they are showed properly. The conclusion I made from this is that it's probably usually better to use % and not px so that your code is properly visible on every possible screen. And finally, my question is: are there any cases when px is preferred over % and why? https://code.sololearn.com/W8B82nRpjK2i/?ref=app

15th Nov 2019, 1:14 PM
Rick Sanchez
Rick Sanchez - avatar
4 Answers
+ 7
Hi Rick and Morty fans, 1. Your stylesheet and images all failed to load on our devices, because you are using local path C:\ You need to upload to web host such ad dropbox, here is a tutorial: [Tutorial] Upload content from your device to CodePlayground - The Dropbox way https://code.sololearn.com/WW6t4B73kJVz/?ref=app 2. You overdid the SVG: (i) you can put every SVG components into one single <svg> Note that SVG is XML, so you must close the shape elements with /> instead of > (ii) For reducing svg image size, make use of SVG's viewbox attribute. <svg viewbox="x, y, width, height"> demo: https://code.sololearn.com/WyWdqa4qLXC4/?ref=app
15th Nov 2019, 2:27 PM
Gordon
Gordon - avatar
+ 4
No you are right. This doesn't only apply to svg but to webdev in general, you should preferrably use relative units, like % or em or vw etc instead of pixels. I can think of only one case in which I use pixels consistently, and that is when having one pixel thick borders. Sometimes you also need pixels when manipulating widths or so in javascript. Nice first project though!
15th Nov 2019, 1:33 PM
Schindlabua
Schindlabua - avatar
+ 1
Gordon Thanks! Appreciate your advices. Gonna correct my code according to what you said.
15th Nov 2019, 5:07 PM
Rick Sanchez
Rick Sanchez - avatar
+ 1
Schindlabua Yeah, that's what I thought! Thanks for the reply.
15th Nov 2019, 5:07 PM
Rick Sanchez
Rick Sanchez - avatar