Posted by Andy Dingley on 06/19/07 13:56

On 19 Jun, 13:01, Travis Newbury <TravisNewb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> That is why you might not want to make your pages readable over a
> large range of settings.

That's an inappropriate generalisation. It's a generalisation because
you've identified one group (teenagers with good eyesight) and then
generalised them as representing all users. It's an inappropriate
generalisation, _not_ because burger-munching couch potatoes don't get
haemorrhoids (they do), but because you've argued that what works for
one site will thus work for all sites.

You might regard this as the fallacy of affirming the consequent
instead. The fact that an audience can do something doesn't mean that
they _should_ be forced to do it. We're arguing in favour of
appropriately-sized fluid-designed sites here, not sites with a
rigidly fixed "large print" approach. They're nearly as bad as the
rigid small-print sites. Having accessibly-sized text doesn't mean
that users can't also have small text, if they prefer it and can read
it.

Whether your argument here stands or falls though, that cited site is
simply poor technical execution by anyone's standards. There's just no
excuse for it.

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