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Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 10/27/49 11:43
On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, dorayme wrote:
> > http://css.nu/articles/font-analogy.html
>
> The analogy is good to illustrate an issue. One problem, of course,
> is that these "annoying" people are not as familiar with the text
> size controls on browsers as they are with volume controls on
> radios.
Right...
> Yes, there are misguided idea about web viewing but perhaps more
> education on text controls would help steer folk towards more cluey
> ways of seeing things.
Absolutely. Which is why I'm so strongly opposed to those web sites
which insist on implementing their own site-specific text size
adjustment feechers - which, if they work at all, work only on that
specific site and none other, so the user's time and effort is wasted
without ever getting nearer to the real answer, which would work on
every site.
> Why, I don't think there is even a completely standard keyboard
> way across all browsers.
Since there isn't a standard keyboard, that isn't entirely surprising.
But some users, particularly naive users, prefer menus anyway, and
most of the common web-compatible browsers have both (with the
keyboard shortcut often mentioned on the menu). So they could start
with the menus, and then migrate to keyboard shortcuts as they gained
confidence.
Some browsers also offer other ways of doing these things, such as
ctrl/mousewheel (that's Opera and Firefox, to name two).
I'm not sure where the right compromise lies, between trying to
spoonfeed users in every detail (and maybe confusing them by showing
them instructions for the wrong browser or the wrong OS), or simply
encouraging them to seek out the controls, on appropriate menus or
help information that their browser makes available anyway, and get on
and use them.
Poley offers a modest link from his main page:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/index.html
to a tutorial-ish page
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/main/adjust.html
which seems a reasonable compromise, but I'm still concerned that a
naive user of only a single browser might find themselves overwhelmed
with detail here. Whereas the menus and help information for their
own browser are surely going to contain what they need (at this
level), and not confuse them with detail about other browsers and
OSes.
Admittedly that may not go as far as showing them how (in appropriate
browsers) to protect themselved from microfonts by setting a minimum
font size. But as that's only available in a sub-set of browsers,
should it be mentioned in such a generally-applicable page?
So, as I say, I don't really know where the best compromise lies.
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