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Nate Posted…

I should probably clarify - I don't think the text here is too small, but I do think it should be re-sizable. We used to have a font-sizer feature on the page itself, but folks either couldnt find it, or complained because it wasnt the browser's font sizer. Perhaps a simple button for one size larger font option will do the trick.

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francois Posted…

I have to concur -- the font-size here (10px Verdana) is too small. This problem was aggravated by the new liquid layout that led to very long line lengths. Don't get me wrong -- I'm all for liquid layouts, but they often make me want to resize the font. And I have to say, 10px is a size I only use for "small print" on a site, never body text.

I recently decided my own site's font size (11px Verdana) was too small for my own comfort sometimes, and switched to EM measurements. Then I discovered that this made them illegibly small on the Mac at default settings. So I implemented Alistapart's JavaScript/cookie font-size switcher, to switch to an alternative relative-unit stylesheet if desired.

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Paul Sowden Posted…

I disagree with anyone that complains about font size not adjusting, for it is their browser that is at fault, it should provide methods to completely remove all author specified style (I'm only aware Opera does this) and also to resize fonts regardless of how they are specified. It is however also my humble opinion that the font size on this web site is a /little/ small by default.

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Nate Posted…

Well these are good points, I also noticed that the site which made the non-resizing comment uses no css font sizing at all as a workaround. While that may be ok for some layouts, what's the best way to specify your desired font size if it's anything other than "default"? I noticed that this page seemed to fair well with browser font resizing (macIe 5,5.1, winIe 6), though it's initial font sizes are quite large in all but Mozilla. I'm leaning towards alternate stylesheets.

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Nate Posted…

somewhat on the topic: apple dev: working with fonts

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Paul Posted…

The problem is if you don't specify the font size in pixels you can't decide the font size at all, it could be anything. If you want any sort of control pixels are the only way. The worst thing you can do is assume something about the users default font, and make it smaller, cos it really annoys me.... um.. people that have default font size set pretty small.

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Posted…

So, does anyone take the users' resolution into consideration? Because at 1024x768 I think the type reads well. At higher resolutions I could see where this could be a problem. If you are a web designer, do you take this into consideration?

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Nate Posted…

Paul - yet another valid point.. most anyone who sets their font-sizing to below "default" will have a tough time reading this site currently. I'm thinking that your ALA stylesheet switching article will come in handy here. Anon - I do take resolution into consideration.. but it almost makes no difference since "readability" is not an absolute factor and much of this font size issue revolves around subjective font preferences.

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francois Posted…

It may be time to revisit this article when we head into design=control territory: A Dao of Web Design. The web isn't DTP.

My current approach is to try and ensure my site is visually pleasing (to me) by default*, but with all units relative.
*Default settings of most-common target user agent

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dRu Posted…

I think that Mozilla's browser 0.9.9 does a great job of allowing people to resize the text using ctrl+ or ctrl-. Do any other browsers have this function?

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pepe Posted…

I believe Mac IE allows you to use Command + and -.

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Nate Posted…

Win IE 6 - Hold Alt and press V X M to get medium setting. That's so not handy.

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michael Posted…

It is certainly safe to assume based on user testing that anything other than Georgia or Verdana is an unreadable font, and Georgia is not always present on people's machines. I don't know why the Evil Empire doesn't provide some more readable fonts for us to use. As a designer, the whole issue annoys me. My real question, though (no offense): Why does a site about graphics contain almost no graphics? Readability is good, but even the Jakob Nielsen devotees' sites don't look as plain jane as this one. This is a little closer, although I would still call it conservative. This is more like it. Show me some design!

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Nate Posted…

I'm not sure where you're getting the georgia/verdana issue, certainly times new roman, arial, helvetica, etc are out there. Here's a site that lists which fonts get shipped with different products/os's, from microsoft no less. In regards to design, I'm much more interested in what can be done with less; simple is beautiful. Pepe (one of our authors) created the layout of this site, and it's my favorite to read and look at of past variations. I do agree that the arena of exciting CSS based design is wide open - why don't you take your site out of that table and show us what'cha got?

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Nate Posted…

Much easier font size changing in win Ie - press ctrl and use scroll mouse button. (via antenna)

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michael Posted…

Right, but I don't consider Times, Arial, etc. to be readable. In fact, quite the opposite. Georgia and Verdana were designed specifically to be screen readable, and it shows. My comment about the availability of Georgia on all machines is from personal experience. Since this site is aimed at developers, its viewers are more likely to be net-savvy regarding the downloading of fonts.

Admittedly, I'm one to talk - my site has not been updated in quite some time, but I am planning on implementing some kind of weird CSS-based layout. So many projects, so little time...

Thanks for the info on changing font size, I've been thinking about that a lot lately regarding another site on which I'm currently working.

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robert Posted…

EMs are the answer to accessibility. Macs see EM sized fonts just fine in a modern browser. If anyone is browsing a site using EM sized fonts using NS4 then things go awry. It just sucks. A redesign last summer at the college where I work led me to sniff for NS4 and deliver a pixel based style sheet. Everyone gets the accessible style sheet but if NS4 then they get a pixel based CSS file.