Font Size Issues (Pixel versus Point Size)

[DavidSwan]

When creating a new Canvas Page the default font size is set at 20 pixels. Default heading level sizes are also set in pixels. Yet, when changing the size of text the only options are points. This is aggravating because it causes extra work in order to ensure consistency in font sizes throughout the content of Canvas pages. For instance, it would be great to have the option to set font sizes as pixels without diving into into the html to do so. See my video for a visual of what I am talking about.

[chriscas]

Hi @DavidSwan,

Your youtube video is, unfortunately, unavailable to the public right now.  Could you fix that?

Really quick on font sizes, from what I see on my end, if you don't change anything related to font size in pages, the default font size is 16px/12pt.  Maybe your video will explain what you're seeing more once we can view it.

-Chris

[DavidSwan]

Oops. I set the video to public.

https://youtu.be/_ldMva5KAFw

[chriscas]

Hi @DavidSwan,

Thanks for making the video public.  The behavior you see is not consistent with what I experience in my institution's Canvas instance.  When I create a new page, the default text size is 12pt.  I wonder if your school/institution implemented some kind of custom CSS/Javascript to change the Canvas defaults for some reason.  Could you perhaps check on this with your local Canvas administrator(s) (usually in the eLearning / IT / Digital Education areas).  You can let us know what you're able to learn from them and then we can possibly offer more suggestions based on that.

-Chris

[DavidSwan]

I asked my colleagues who administrate our Canvas instance and they said the only custom CSS we have added is for EvaluationKit.

[chriscas]

Very interesting, we have EvaluatuionKIT (Now Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys) too.  Do you see the same behavior using different web browsers or different computers (if you happen to have access to more than one)?  I'll admit I'm a bit stumped why your behavior seems so different.

-Chris

[DavidSwan · Accepted solution]

Well, I have been working with one of our IT people and they experimented with the issue. I opened Canvas in Firefox (Chrome is my go-to) and the default was 12pt. So he did more digging and was able to replicate the problem in chrome. I had increased the size of my fonts in chrome and that impacted Canvas. The snapshot of the settings is attached. I changed the setting and everything is back to normal. Thanks for working on this with me. Hopefully other people will benefit from this thread.