That adjusts leading (from the material originally used, so rhymes with "breading") and thus space between lines.
This adjusts properties such as x- and cap heights, which determine relative proportions of characters within the line. For example, in a browser supporting font-size-adjust, any font can be used as small caps.
(2023) and it is worth noting that web typography is painfully rudimentary, as even a quick skim of Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style suffices to demonstrate. I would strongly recommend the purchase of a physical copy to anyone in or aspiring to design; you will make far more beautiful text just for having read it, which I think you will also enjoy (I have and do!), and it is a handsome artifact besides.
Yeah, I've read it loooong time ago. Just borrowed it from archive.org, so thanks for the reminder :)
That's said, I think there's A LOT that modern CSS can do in terms of typography, which is even more important given the prevalence of Figma, which, in my opinion is a very limiting tool, even compared to Penpot (IMO superior to Figma, as tied more to web standards). Think: text-box, RLH units...
I’m probably missing the obvious but how is font-size-adjust different from text-box-trim.
https://github.com/jantimon/text-box-trim-examples