CSS x-small shows different in editor

[testsetup]

Viewing a snippet in the editor, shows the page text at a larger size than when saved and in the real website.

It is picking up my stylesheet as it offers the styles from that sheet in the dropdown but the text is showing in what looks like ‘small’, when it should be picking up a body (or p style I added but made no difference) of ‘x-small’ from the stylesheet.

If I highlight some of the text and chose Size 1 it does insert ‘xx-small’ into the span/font tag
Size 2 does not write any code, guess it refers to my stylesheet but if only it would write 'x-small' it would be good.

If I change my stylesheet to ‘xx-small’ it does indeed show that as same size in the editor and browser and size 2 then writes as 'x-small' and the appearence in the editor looks like the actual IE7 text size.

I am very confused as to why it is doing this and would appreciate any workaround.

PS - I have just thought well, I will go with font-size=small, so changed my style sheet body tag to that and thought yep the sites homepage looks ok.
Well I open the page up in the editor - and the text on the page in the editor is now showing in the next size up, looks like a 'medium'.

So I have got nowwhere, the editors display font size for my page is always one size larger than the real life IE7 and FF2, whose text size settings are both on normal. 

Does that give anyone a clue as to where the problem might be please? 

Thanks

[admin]

Hello,

To be honest, I'm not too sure.  I'm not really a web designer, so all that "css stuff" is pretty much beyond my comprehension.

I do know that the x-small css is a "relative" tag.  I think it's relative to whatever font "size" you have specified in the body or p tag for the page. 

So the problem might be with how the x-small tag is "related" to whatever size you have specified in the page/

Honestly, I'm not sure how to diagnose this, as I'm not sure if it's working by design, a problem with your CSS, or something else.

Sorry I'm not much more help.   

[Jenkinhill]

Does that give anyone a clue as to where the problem might be please? 

Font definitions of small, x-small, size 2 etc have long been deprecated (about 8 years I think?), and it is possible that any browser or editor would have difficulties with them nowadays.  If you want to use font sizing you really should be using % for the initial font size in the body CSS descriptor and then use em for size changes within the page. As with the old x-small sizing, the actual displayed size will depend on the default text size set for the browser. Alternatively use pt or px which are less user friendly.

[testsetup]

Thanks Kelvyn.

Thats strange about the deprecated status because it passes CSS and Xhtml validation at http://validator.w3.org/ using that sizing, and no comments or warnings mention anything about that.

Other articles say % can make a right mess of the sites appearance using % and decimal em sizing has its critics.

I think it best to set the font and let others resize it using their browser options or I may do another stylesheet for 'medium' and give a link, so fixing it with pt or px is not accessibility friendly. Only the two you mention and the above are.

It is also Expression Web Designers default CSS font sizing option for new styles,  both V1 which is only 2 years old and 2.0 Beta, 1 months old  and these are well rated for CSS standards .

You may be on to something by the default browser text but could you comment anymore please, I do not change that size when editing a page in Snippetmaster from viewing the actual page in site, so it is strange whny the editor shows it a size larger and thats on all PC's in our office and home mixed between Vista/XP but all IE7 and FF.

Thanks again
Phil