These days, any website must have responsive design. It makes your website more screen-friendly. Using `media} rules, modern CSS simplifies the process for designers to create a responsive website. The unit of measurement used in CSS rem that denotes the font size of the root element is called “root em,” or rem. Thus, 1rem is equivalent to the typeface.
With thorough explanations and examples, this article will teach you how to create a responsive website using two CSS measurement units.
The browser converts both em and rem, which are scalable and adaptable units, into pixel values based on the font size configurations in your design.
Pixels are converted between rem and em units, as I previously said. The primary and fixed unit used to measure each screen size is the pixel.
How Does REM Unit Operate?
The root element is the foundation of REM units. When utilising rem units, the font size of the page’s root element—the HTML element—determines the pixel size that they translate to. The root font size is multiplied by the rem unit number that you have chosen.
How should I utilise my REM unit?
Our design is flexible because of the REM Unit. REM Unit is a fantastic way to adjust the typography and spacing throughout the entire website by simply adjusting the font size in a single root element.
With this flexibility, we can make our designs more flexible, easier to modify throughout development, and enable browser users to alter the overall site size for optimal readability.
Therefore, since rem only lets us modify the font size in one location, we can deduce that it is utilised when we wish to make adjustments throughout the entire website.
How Does an EM Unit Operate?
The EM Unit is determined by the font size of the element that defines it; if that element does not define a font size, it will inherit from its parent or from an ancestor element, perhaps all the way down to the document’s root. The pixel value is multiplied by the specified element’s font size when using em units.
How should I utilise my EM unit?
The main benefit of em units is that they enable sizing values to be based on a font size other than the HTML element’s. Scalability should be the main goal of em units when it comes to a certain design aspect.
For example, you may utilise em values for the padding, margin, and line-height surrounding the menu item and navigation. In this manner, the space surrounding the menu items will adjust proportionately when the font size on the menu is changed, regardless of how the rest of the layout changes.
Design elements like buttons, headlines, and menu items may have their own clearly specified font sizes, as in the example above. You want the entire component to resize appropriately if you adjust these font sizes.
This rule often applies to margin, padding, width, height, and line-height settings for components whose font sizing is not the default.
REM and EM units in responsive web design
Now that we are fully aware of the functions of REM and EM units. It’s time to examine how we may leverage this adaptability to create a website that is responsive.
The REM unit modifies the majority of the spacing and sizing by specifying the font in the root element.
One crucial thing to remember is that, when specifying the font-size value in the root element (such as HTML), you should always use percentage values. Using % instead of pixels has the advantage of removing the fixed hard-coded value from our root element.
I came across an excellent resource in an article on webdesign.tutsplus.com that covered several important and helpful points:
- The browser converts rem and em units into pixel values based on the font sizes used in your design. The font size of the element on which an em unit is applied determines its value.
- The HTML element’s font size serves as the basis for rem units. Font size inherited from any parent element can affect em units.
- Font size inheritance from browser font settings might affect rem units.
- For sizing that should adjust based on an element’s font size other than the root, use em units.
- For media queries, use rem units.
- In multi-column layout widths, use % in place of em or rem.
- If scaling will inevitably ruin a layout element, don’t use em or rem.
It will become evident after reading the entire article with a few brief code samples just how versatile CSS em and rem units are and how to use them to improve responsive design.
Potential Applications of CSS Units
Determining which CSS units to use in a certain situation might be challenging. Understanding every use case for every unit requires practice, but I’ll list the most frequent ones below.
- When working with features like border-radius, box shadow, or border-width that aren’t greatly impacted by responsiveness, use pixels.
- Use rem for adjusting font sizes. Make sure the font size of your root element is 16px or 10px, as it points to the root element. (10px might simplify the calculation of rem values!)
- When working with widths and heights, use percentages.
- When working with items that rely on the website’s viewport, use vh and vw.
In summary
It may take some time to become used to using CSS units, but with consistent practice, you’ll know which unit to use in your frontend development projects.
Here, our experience with CSS rem units comes to an end. It is clear that utilising these units in our code has several benefits, including increased component definition flexibility, scalability, responsiveness, and a better reading experience.