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Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 09/26/19 11:26
On Mon, 12 Sep 2005, Jim Higson wrote:
> The problem is, if I trust my users to have setup their browser properly,
> how many will have?
For the users of Billware, they -all- have it set up the right size, and
here's my logic. Those who made a choice, got the size that they wanted
(within a certain tolerance); those who didn't make a choice have -paid-
Bill to set the right size for them - who are we to argue? Surely a
company as large as MS have studied their customer base closely enough to
know what default text size to set for them? If they needed to be asked
at installation time, Windows would ask them to choose - it asks them
enough other questions before the installation is complete, after all.
For the users of other OSes, in my experience, initial text size can vary
a lot, according to what installation choice was made of display
"resolution" etc.[1]; there may well be a dpi calibration, but the
installation dialogs usually don't take the user through setting it, and
many don't choose to calibrate the display with it. Instead, if they're
dissatisfied with the text size, they typically configure the
applications, rather than the display system. That's been my observation,
anyway.
[1] this won't change when we're all using panels, bearing in mind that
the expensive panels have higher values of pixels per inch, and thus are
apt for higher dpi settings, even though they're the same physical size.
(IBM are already over 200 pixels per inch for top-end displays.)
And we should never forget those with impaired vision, who have to set
very non-standard sizes to be able to use the web at all. Are they, like
the rest of us, to be asked to set their text size 50% larger (or
whatever) than they wanted it, so that headstrong authors can pull it back
down again to what they *really* needed?
> And of those who have set their font size, how many
> will have set it while looking at the typical site which scales it down?
"Me, Sir", I use Mozilla's friendly minimum font size setting to defend
myself against unreasonably scaled-down fonts, and recommend anyone seen
in a similar position to do the same.
[But I have to remember to turn that off again when I'm asked to review
someone else's web site...]
> At a quick count, about 60% of the CSS Zen layouts on the front page are too
> small for me to read if I set the font-size to be how I like it at 100%.
>
> Eg:
> http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/176/176.css&page=0
> http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/178/178.css&page=0
>
> Now, these are not pages styled by amateurs.
That's true...
> Their authors should be the ones who understand accessibility and
> respecting user preferences more than anyone.
Oh, really? I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with this. The
csszengarden is a spectacular demonstration of what -can- be achieved with
CSS - but under what are practically laboratory conditions: it is in no
way a role model to be used, as it stands, for production use on the web.
Its contributors, like all of us, have their strengths and weaknesses, and
furthermore they are somewhat limited by the rules of the zengarden.
Given that very few of us are experts in all of graphic design,
typography, accessibility and web technologies, I'd risk saying that the
best web pages, by and large, are the product of co-operative work
between, at least, two people: a graphic designer with some understanding
of the web, and a techie with some sympathy for graphic design.
> Is there any reason very small text would be considered to the
> spirit of the web standards?
No.
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