Why is text rendered with a greater font-size in Opera?

My suspicion is that Opera uses a different fallback font for Sans-serif than the other browsers do. That should be possible to confirm or eliminate by using a different font that is definitely installed on the system.

This seems most feasible to me. After changing to Arial (which I definitely have installed), the text matches exactly in all of the browser's I've tested in. I'm not 100% sure what the problem was, but that solved it in my case.

Thanks for your help! – Bungle Oct 12 '10 at 23:10.

I'm not reproducing your problem. This is what I get in Firefox 3.6.8 (and in Internet Explorer 8).

But the height of the text at each font-size is still similar to my screenshot. Are you able to compare what you're seeing in FF/3.6.8 and IE/8 to Opera 10.10 to see if there's a height discrepancy like I'm seeing? – Bungle Oct 11 '10 at 21:03.

I was having a similar issue. I found that the default computed font size in FF and most other browsers on is 16px, but on opera the default seems to be 20px. I simply set font-size:16px; for html, and it seemed to take care of it.

After all combinations of CSS reset files and other tricks, this finally did it! – joshcomley Jan 26 at 23:32.

This is where a css reset stylesheet can really simplify things for you. meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/01/re....

Thanks - please see my comments above. – Bungle Oct 11 '10 at 20:59.

I had similar issue until I used reset CSS of Eric Meyer :).

Thanks for the answer, but the issue still occurs with a reset stylesheet - please see my comments above. – Bungle Oct 11 '10 at 20:52.

I think I know your problem. I am getting it exactly the same size in all browsers (at least Firefox, Opera and Chrome). This, I am sure, can be easily overlooked if you don't know you or someone else has done this, but try checking the zoom settings in Opera... let me know if it doesn't help and I will work some more on it.

Thanks, ClarkeyBoy - my zoom setting in Opera is the default 100%. Is it possible that there's a quirk with my Helvetica font? I'll try using a generic sans-serif (and maybe other common fonts) to see if this is reproducible with other font-families.

– Bungle Oct 11 '10 at 21:06 Try checking Firefox then. Its worth just checking - otherwise you will feel a right fool if it turns out, having spent days trying to sort this, that Firefox is zoomed out by 10%. I am also having a fiddle with it.

I am starting to wonder if it is a quirks thing - if either you are missing the font or we are. – ClarkeyBoy Oct 11 '10 at 21:13 @Bungle you may also want to check out whether you have multiple Helveticas on the system, e.g. TTF and Type 1. I would try this with Arial to make sure – Pekka Oct 11 '10 at 21:16 @ClarkeyBoy: Thanks - FF is at 100% too.

I don't think it can be a zoom issue, since both FF and Opera will also zoom the red box in proportion to the text. I'm testing with other fonts now to see if I can isolate the problem... starting to suspect a Helvetica issue as well. – Bungle Oct 11 '10 at 21:25 @Pekka: Good call.

Trying that now. – Bungle Oct 11 '10 at 21:25.

I came across this thread when I was having similar issues with Opera 11.10 on Windows 7 x64. Opera was defaulting to using 20px as the body font-size (rather than 16px which is what other browsers use). This persisted even after uninstalling, deleting Opera preferences and re-installing.It turns out that Opera will honor your system font-size preferences (set under 'Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display' on Win7) for rendered website text whereas other browsers (I tested FF4, Chrome 11, Safari 5, IE 9) do not.

My system font size was set to 125% which explains the 20px. Once I set my system font zoom to 100%, Opera behaved the same as the others. I'm not sure which behavior is more correct (In a way, it's nice that Opera honors my font choice) but since since other browsers do not do the same, it is "unexpected".

I don't have a Mac to test but perhaps MacOS has a similar system font preference?

Came across similar issues, had to change my fallback order from: font-family: Helvetica, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; to font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; Since Arial and Helvetica are almost exactly the same size, when opera falls back it still looks good.

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