Re: [WSG] Expected behaviour of links to external websites
On 2011/12/21 12:16 (GMT) coder composed: In my experience, most folk 'out there' don't know about right clicking. To say 'it is the user's choice' is mainly untrue, because he/she doesn't know they've got a choice The same situation exists here as with text size control. Just because a user doesn't know about minimum font size or zoom options doesn't mean he doesn't have a choice to use it. Just how many gadgets do you have that you know 100% how to use all its features? Dumbing down to the lowest common denominator degrades the user experience for the undumb at least, and probably even for at least some of the dumb. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. -- Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Expected behaviour of links to external websites
On 2011/12/20 15:42 (GMT+1100) Grant Bailey composed: If the link is to an external site then personally, I prefer the link to open in a new window automatically. Also, not all devices make it easy for users to open a link in a new window on request. I detest pages that think it's their business to decide when I should have a new window. It's my computer, my decision to make, which only very rarely is more than one window per open application. Whenever I encounter such rudeness, I try to show my gratitude by leaving the site completely never to return. When that's not practical I close the window and open the rude URL via history in a new tab or the tab opened from, whichever makes more sense in the situation. Forced new windows must really be no fun for users of hand held devices where all windows need to be full screen to be of any use. It should be sufficient to indicate a link is to offsite via special hover behavior so that the visitor can choose a new window, or tab, _if_ desired. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] How do you cater to users with disabilities?
On 2011/08/23 15:11 (GMT) Julie Romanowski julie.romanowski.l...@statefarm.com composed: To answer your question - Sticking to standards is not enough. Accessibility and usability testing are critical. At my company, we have both an accessibility lab and a usability lab. We have accessibility and assistive technology (AT) experts onsite who test using various AT, and who work with actual AT users to identify issues with applications. We also train designers and developers to identify accessibility issues early in the design and development lifecycle. I guess State Farm's definition of accessibility is vastly different from mine. Otherwise, its online banking wouldn't be using text sized in px (12px body on online2.statefarm.com/b2c/mysf/MyAccount) to 40% the size of my browser UI text and 25% the size of my browser's default. And it wouldn't be printing about 12 times the size displayed on screen. I only get about 8 transactions per page printing scheduled payments confirmation lists. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] How do you cater to users with disabilities?
On 2011/08/23 16:35 (GMT) Julie Romanowski composed: Sad, but true, Felix. We know State Farm Bank (among other sites/applications) has accessibility issues and are working with the support area to resolve them. Unfortunately, changes like this take time. Unfortunately, there are people in every organization who don't like change, and a couple of people from the bank area have not been open to accessibility fixes. However, as a customer, you may have more power than you think. Let State Farm Bank know about the accessibility issues you are encountering. Email, phone, snail mail...I would be happy to give you the CEO's mailing address and you can contact him directly! My account is just over two years old. I'm sure I haven't complained by phone less than 6 times, so please enable me to mail upstream wherever there's any chance to be listened to. Email I've not bothered, as I know how useless that normally is with big business sites. It's probably too late to do any good. Now that its interest on checking rate that attracted me in the first place has dropped to nuisance level, I'm about to find a bank that pays at least 1%. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] disallow IE6 to load the main style sheet
On 2010/12/20 13:13 (GMT-0500) Erickson, Kevin (DOE) composed: I like the let it fail gracefully method. And, using something like !--[if IE 6]link rel=stylesheet href=/styles /ie6_detection_message.css media=screen type=text/css /![endif]--, display a message for IE 6 only, You are using IE 6. Please upgrade your browser to view this site correctly. Correctly? Do all compliant browsers do correctly? Better not best viewed or as intended or -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] disallow IE6 to load the main style sheet
On 2010/12/18 20:33 (GMT-0800) Thierry Koblentz composed: The reason for this is twofold though: firstly, you want to coax people off of IE6. I don't think that's our job... Who better? Wouldn't you rather IE6/7 disappear sooner than later? You enjoy the extra effort the too many years of its massive non-conformity causes? -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Current thinking on fixed width/liquid design ?
On 2010/08/22 12:51 (GMT+0100) Chris Price composed: On 2010/08/22 07:03 (GMT-0400) Felix Miata composed: Sites designed for widths defined in px are not designed for the web, they're designed for resolutions (and thus to exclude comfort and/or usability for those using other resolutions), as print designs are for particular paper, cover or billboard sizes. Conversely, designs styled for the web are resolution independent, working well even when width is below 800px or above 1280px. This sounds a little purist and not particularly practical for many designers. While graphics generated by the css are fluid, images are not so while fonts and html elements may wax and wane at will, graphics designed for the page remain fixed per pixel. The web wasn't designed for graphics, and for the most part still isn't. Images _can_ be sized in em/ex. The degradation they suffer rendered at other than intrinsic size causes no materially different loss of experience than images rendered too small to see the available detail. IOW, an image that's intrinsically 384px by 384px and displayed on the designer's 96 DPI screen will be 4 by 4. On my 192 DPI screen with browser default size set to 32px it will be 2 by 2, which is 1/4 size, and much too small to tell me much compared to the 4 times larger display on the 96 DPI screen. If OTOH, CSS specified that same image to be 6em tall by 6em wide, and specified all other sizes in em, then the image would display 4 by 4 on both the designer's screen and my screen. On his all the expected detail would be preserved, and all the layout totally as he intended. On mine too would the layout remain totally as he intended, with the image proportionally the same size to the layout, and also 4 by 4, just with poorer detail, but only if the image was exactly the same image. If OTOH the image was one less optimized/compacted in the first place, one intended for use by the higher DPI screens that are already common, then there wouldn't be material degradation, and possibly none at all, depending on the image itself and the browser engine rendering it. You can't say that pages designed for widths are not designed for the web. I sure do. If a page is designed to look good in a web browser it is designed for the web. Not at all. CSS came along well after the web. Before it and font came along, inherent adaptability and usability could not be destroyed by the page designer's artificial constraints. It wasn't about looking good, it was about universal availability and adaptability. That is the inherent web still. Anything constraining the web's inherent adaptability is pretending to be for something else instead, and simply hosted on the web for its ubiquitous availability only - absent universality. Sizing in px is top of the heap in that regard, as it totally ignores the user's environment and preferences. (you can do print design that is resolution independent - moreso than you can for web browsers). Observation of this assertion is first instance for me. Please elaborate. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] EM bug in Safari 5?
On 2010/07/30 14:05 (GMT-0700) tee composed: I did another test by increasing Safari's font size to 18px, and the layout expanded. This makes the EM not stable to use for layout. I wonder if it has always like this for Safari or is a new bug. I'm having a hard time understanding what seems to be your complaint, which is that the size of an em can vary. Variation in size of an em is WAD. Are you sure you understand the definition? It might help to read it in context of all its modern relatives: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-values/ It may be that your meaning of stable will be addressed through appropriate use of rem instead of em as browser support for that new unit becomes the norm. In the mean time remember the web is not paper. Flexibility and absence of rigid sameness is the web's inherent advantage. http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/ -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] EM bug in Safari 5?
On 2010/07/29 14:55 (GMT-0400) Kepler Gelotte composed: On 2010/07/29 10:29 (GMT-0700) tee composed: It's been quite a while I have to do a site using EM unit for the layout width (with max/min-widths treatment), I am getting a shrunk page in Safari. Here on Linux, it's about 1500px wide in FF and Google Chrome unstable (which uses same Webkit engine as Safari). If Safari isn't doing the same, it must be a Safari-specific bug. http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/ I wonder for those who do see a difference if it is because on Safari an em may not be generic, but rather specific to the actual font-family. Maybe FF is measuring generically, while Safari is measuring based upon the diminuitive Corbel. Do you see the same result if you remove 'Corbel, Arial,' from the CSS? I see the same problem you mentioned in both safari on windows as well as safari on the mac. It appears that safari does not equate font-size: 100% == 16px; If Safari's default has been adjusted to something other than 16px to accommodate user requirements, or in any other browser, it shouldn't. There's _no_ valid point in assuming any particular px size as a default size. Set your font-size to 16px instead of 100.1% and the width will be fixed. 1-it's rude 2-it defeats one major purpose of em sizing (to accommodate/honor visitor requirements, while maintaining a design's proportions to whatever extent viewport size permits) Modern browsers will still be able to resize the font, but for IE you may I've resized in advance by setting my default to to something other than 16px meet my needs. I shouldn't have to do it again on every rude page I load. True resize is a browser defense mechanism. It only need be applied on encountering offensive CSS. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] EM bug in Safari 5?
On 2010/07/29 13:42 (GMT-0700) tee composed: On Jul 29, 2010, at 12:55 PM, Felix Miata wrote: It appears that safari does not equate font-size: 100% == 16px; If Safari's default has been adjusted to something other than 16px to accommodate user requirements, or in any other browser, it shouldn't. There's _no_ valid point in assuming any particular px size as a default size. All browsers in my machine use default font size, because I find this is the only way I could make websites render more consistently. Used to have 2px extra large in all my browsers, it was very bad as I forgot about it, and a number of sites I did, the font sizes turned out much smaller in clients' machines. If you don't either: 1-have multiple browsers and/or profiles each with a multiplicity of default sizes set, or 2-constantly change the defaults in the only/few browser(s) you use, then you're testing inadequately for the way browsers are built by their developers and expected to be used by real users. Whether initial browser defaults are adequate for any particular environment depends on too many factors to expect no one to change them or need to change them. The web isn't paper. Paper design paradigms (e.g. consistence of mere appearance) are inappropriate for web design. On 2010/07/29 16:35 (GMT-0400) tee composed: em only (width)- I forgot the correct link in my original post. http://greensho.nexcess.net/em-vs-px/em-width2.html It has nothing to do with Corbel font. font: normal 16px/1.5em Arial, sans-serif http://greensho.nexcess.net/em-vs-px/em-width3.html font: normal 100%/1.5em Arial, sans-serif http://greensho.nexcess.net/em-vs-px/em-width4.html font: normal 1em/1.5em Arial, sans-serif http://greensho.nexcess.net/em-vs-px/em-width5.html Anybody has a Safari 4 to test on? I don't seen any difference on http://greensho.nexcess.net/em-vs-px/em-width.html between Safari 4.0.3 FF 3.6.8, but I have my old G3 Tiger Mac on a big CRT display where 16px is actually a big enough default to use. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] ems versus pixels
On 2010/07/21 11:47 (GMT-0400) agerasimc...@unioncentral.com composed: I agree - I usually set just the body font for something like 95%, and then the container font for 1em Is that a good solution? Almost. 95% on body is telling users they've screwed up choosing their browsers' default sizes by choosing a size that's too big for their own needs or taste. You have no idea what theirs are, nor do you know they haven't already set DejaVu Sans, Verdana or Arial as default family to bias text larger than the typical serif defaults. http://www.dev-archive.net/articles/font-analogy.html -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] ems versus pixels
On 2010/07/20 09:53 (GMT-0400) agerasimc...@unioncentral.com composed: I've been converting some of our company public-facing static web-sites from pixels to ems for layout and font-size. But just recently I encountered several references that pixels are getting back into popularity - as it offers absolute control over text, and that most browsers now can resize font based on pixels. There is no such thing as designer CSS having absolute control over text. Absent user's browser having designer CSS disregarded entirely, necessary browser defenses will be applied, for better or not, often resulting in visitor leaving prematurely. Any thoughts/suggestions on whether I should push the effort on converting our sites to ems? Minimum text size and zoom functions built into browsers were put there to allow users to defend against bad web design. Absent offense, defense needn't be applied. It shouldn't need to be applied, first because the web is too old for bad design to be standard practice, second because it's unnecessary, and third because it's rude. Text sized in px completely disregards user preferences. That's an excellent definition of rude. In contrast, text sized in em (applied to size text, em is nothing but an alternative syntax for %) relates to the user's preference. When 1em or 100% is the result, the user is getting precisely what he prefers, making him a happy site visitor. Text containers sized in em, within a range that depends on resolution, viewport size, 1em size, retain for all practical purposes the proportions of the original design regardless of the actual sizes used by the designer. Beyond the range, contraints will cause variance, but usually not cause the page to be unusable. In contrast, when user defenses force legible text sizing upon sites sized in px, usability often deteriorates, and sometimes disappears altogether. It's often said images should be sized in px because only display at intrinsic size is acceptable, that deterioration from browser scaling to non-intrinsic sizes is unacceptable. I'm sure that's true from a perfectionist designer's point of view. What is also unacceptable is unscaled images due to a too small intrinsic size leaving necessary detail undiscernable to the user. The user impact of scaled vs too small is equivalent quality reduction, but scaled images have the advantage of preserving the site design's proportions. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Difference between applied CSS and Computed CSS
On 2010/02/26 12:00 (GMT+1100) Stephen Holmes (Gmail) composed: the computed size of the font would have been 16pt, the default in IE 6 The standards mode default font size of IE[6-8] is and always has been 12pt. Most often that translates to 16px, but often users and laptop vendors change the default DPI from 96, which is what results in 16px, to something higher, most commonly 120, which results in a 20px default. In IE[6-8] quirks mode fonts in sizes specified by keywords or relatively are slightly larger, to match equivalent size specification results of older IE versions, many of which are tabled on: http://fm.no-ip.com/auth/IE/absolute-sizes-IE5.html -- Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, 2nd US President Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessibility does not matter!
On 2010/01/31 22:40 (GMT) Jason Grant composed: @Thierry [...] However I still feel that your examples are far fetched (i.e. unlikely). I don't, but I do think you're doing your best to rationalize compounding the difficulties that result from real-life accidents and disabilities, be they large, small, avoidable, or otherwise. These are not robots or statistics gatherers you're making unnecessary difficulty for, but real people who need to do what they need to do. -- Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, 2nd US President Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Assistance with flash example sites
On 2010/02/01 14:52 (GMT+1100) Russ Weakley composed: A colleague has just asked me for some examples of Flash sites: 1. examples of flash sites which are not keyboard accessible (and/or poor tab ordering) I can't see any pattern to tab ordering on http://www.iontelevision.com/schedule.php plus once I click on anything there I'm no longer able to leave the FF3.5.7 tab it's in using Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn. I can't see any indication of focus on http://tinyurl.com/yhpy4zf 2. examples of flash sites which ARE keyboard accessible I'm curious how frequently real people encounter examples of such a thing. I do my best to avoid Flash sites, as Flash content invariably uses predominantly mousetype. http://webdesign-l.com/mailman/private/list/2010-January/015534.html is part of a thread on HBO's new site design, apparently devoid of functional non-Flash content, maybe useful to your colleague. -- Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, 2nd US President Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] site url
On 2010/01/18 11:44 (GMT+1100) Marvin Hunkin composed: http://www.raulferrer.com/joe/html/ Looks like you forgot to validate again: http://tinyurl.com/ya7p6sy http://tinyurl.com/ydoat7q -- Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, 2nd US President Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] First stab at html5
On 2009/12/31 17:46 (GMT) designer composed: @David: rivers? Duh. Please explain. David mentions this time and again on all the design/CSS mailing lists. It's about word spacing and justification: http://www.westciv.com/style_master/academy/css_tutorial/properties/text_layout.html -- We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. John Adams, 2nd US President Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] my final site
On 2009/11/25 14:35 (GMT+1100) Marvin Hunkin composed: well take a look at this site. hopefully it is what everyone has been giving me advice. so hopefully this is the final version. http://www.raulferrer.com/joe/html/ Under the image of strawberries on FF 3.5.5 2.0.0.20 @144 DPI 24px default I see much text overlapping. I see no pricing for Mangoes or Mushrooms, though I do see a dollar sign peeking out the left side of the Tomatoes image near top, and same for Strawberries image. -- The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 1 Corinthians 7:3 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessibility and HTML Emails
On 2009/10/28 17:37 (GMT-0400) kris wright composed: email clients vary wildly in their HTML rendering capabilities, and on occasion actually modify your HTML code makes things even more confusing. Email is supposed to be text communication. Web pages are web pages. If you want your email recipients to reliably see web pages nearly as you intend for them to look, have them open them in their web browsers instead of their email clients. Make the email 100% plain text only, and provide in the email a URL to the HTML (and CSS) formatted version on your web host. Most HTML email that arrives here is redirected to the bit bucket, since HTML in email is a highly favored spammer malware delivery method. Whatever HTML email doesn't reach the bit bucket is seen as (big enough to read) plain text anyway, courtesy of my email app, which has been directed to show all messages only as plain text. -- A patriot without religion . . . is as great a paradox, as an honest man without the fear of God. . . . 2nd U.S. President, John Adams Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessibility of iFrames?
On 2009/09/28 14:06 (GMT+1000) nedlud composed: Would iframes help at all? Are they any better, from an accessibility point of view, than old fashioned frames? Most iframes on current sites are terrible. They're typically used for ads, and a minimal HTML size is set or defaulted to that depends on CSS to enlarge to a useful size. When a user disallows site styles in order to obtain adequately sized text without overlapping or hidden content, the iframe shrinks down to so small a size that typically only 2-3 words from a line of text is visible, and maybe 2-3 rows, while its content generally needs to be as much as 5 times or more that size to actually be useful. On the bright side, the ads usually aren't missed. Non-ad iframes generally suffer similar limitations for users unless the site stylists are aware and take care. -- The Scriptures tell us righteousness exalteth a Nation. 2nd U.S. President, John Adams Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] A Standards Oxymoron
On 2009/08/23 00:02 (GMT+0300) Rimantas Liubertas composed: ...in most cases this requirement does not make any sense. On the other hand, it is not that hard to achieve as some may claim. Achieving px perfection on a designer's machine isn't so hard, but maintaining it on all visitor's machines is impossible. None do well when encountering the minimum font size or text zoom defenses too often required to use them. If existed web standards of politeness or user friendliness, such designs could never meet them. -- How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver. Proverbs 16:16 NKJV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] How Important Is Web Accessibility?
On 2009/08/18 11:07 (GMT+0100) James Jeffery composed: Zooming is present on the majority of modern browsers, so where does this leave elastic layouts, and em's? Should we still develop sites that grow should the user want to increase the text size? Even though it's the lower browsers that do that? I've been out of the scene for a while, so I've lost touch with the current practices and conventions. Browser zoom, text or full, is a defense mechanism provided by browser makers for the benefit of their users. Absent offense from a site (e.g. undersized text, tiny images), defense is unnecessary. Best to not make your sites offensive in the first place. -- How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver. Proverbs 16:16 NKJV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] changing font sizes from within a page.
On 2009/07/20 14:05 (GMT+0100) Bob designer composed: I would be grateful if someone could tell me what is the current best practice for letting users change the font-size (e.g., by clicking on three 'a's of different sizes to make different css files be used) on the web site. Is it still a good idea, or do we go for the approach of using the browser to do it? Any and all helpful suggestions gratefully appreciated. You're trying to treat symptoms instead of curing disease. If you incorporate resolution independence (size nothing except possibly the tiniest of margins, borders or padding in px or pt, and use 1em as established by the visitor instead as your basic measuring unit) users will rarely need to change font size. FWIW, most places I've seen a 3 size chooser, the choices are between subatomic, microscopic, and tiny. -- No Jesus - No peace , Know Jesus - Know Peace Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessible websites
On 2009/07/07 21:05 (GMT+0100) Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis composed: On 7/7/09 04:19, Felix Miata wrote: To suppose Frozen means anything other than frozen undersize would be a difficult supposition to support, as one need only peruse the web to see how rare frozen at or larger than default can be found. Thus, disrespectful (smaller than default) font sizes were and _are_ the #1 (foundational) problem, with other font issues lagging. ... I'm uncomfortable with your equation of common with foundational. I'm not sure I see such an equation. Nevertheless, on web pages where text is the content, legibility should be job one. Without large enough text, legibility is impossible regardless what other factors are involved. Too small is too small, something that raising contrast or increasing leading cannot ever fix. Safest presumption of choice, very much yes. Any other presumption, which is what use of non-defaults makes, is a poor foundation on which to build in usability and/or accessibility. I think it's safer to build usability and accessibility on reality rather than presumptions. Most web site designs incorporate presumptions. Designers are neither normal users, nor are they sitting over the shoulders of visitors to see what their settings are or how they are reacting to what they find. So, the designer cannot know what those settings are, or more importantly, that any deviation from 100% acceptance of those settings can provide a better experience for the majority of visitors. The reality is that a body font-size rule other than 100%/1em/medium is a presumption that the user default is supra-optimal and can be improved upon by the designer by reducing overall text size. This claim 1 is addressed by the major point of Inkster article. On the contrary, Toby argues from the position that users defaults might not match their preferences. Yes, certainly for some portion of the universe that must follow. But, the point he makes is it's more likely than not that a designer adjustment will produce a negative result. Claim 2: Acceptance of publisher font size suggestions is not a valid user choice. I'm not sure I understand your claim. If you assume an actual user setting is not a valid choice, No. I'm saying the actual user setting is an entirely valid choice and means something different than what you assume it does. The default font setting is explicitly the font size to use when the publisher happens not to suggest a font size. The user setting means Please use the publisher's suggested font size. If they fail to suggest a font size, please use X not Please use this font size for body text on all webpages, I don't see how you can read please into it. When publisher uses px or pt or mm or cm he's totally disregarding whatever my preference might be, while having no actual knowledge what sizes his so-called suggestions produce. When he's using some arbitrary fraction of my choice, he still doesn't know the actual result but merely the bias he created. Either way, to think the user is asking with a please is just ludicrous. although I understand most webpages will override this with itsy font size suggestions. As evidence, consider the help text for these features: ... And what do their help sections on minimum and text zoom and page zoom have to say? Most are personal computers. By definition they come with personalizability built in. The vendors have provided for the clueless, and everyone else, usable defaults. Authors should defer to the clueful, not the clueless. Doing otherwise is an affirmative designer choice for chaos outside their own microcosms. The clueless who are overwhelmed by their cluelessness can generally acquire clues. I think it's dangerous to ignore clueless users when building for usability and accessibility since: Deferring and ignoring are not the same thing. You don't know that the clueless actually need help, or that your actions provide it. 1. The majority of users seem pretty clueless. Where are the stats to prove it? 2. Cognitive disabilities could contribute to effective computer cluelessness. And? Also, given that setting default font sizes does not make body text that size on much, if not most, of the web, I'd expect clueful users who wanted that size to set a minimum size, reject publisher font size suggestions, or reject publisher style suggestions entire. The clueful do choose in different ways. Minimums tend to cause text to overlap or disappear because the designs don't accommodate size deviation from the publisher preference. Blanket rejection generally causes all sorts of other problems. Try it yourself on some typical overpopulated pages and see how easy or difficult it is to actually find objects on. Modern pages are full of contextual content that amounts to haystacks hiding needles. So, these defenses, as most defenses, have drawbacks, which may or may
Re: [WSG] Accessible websites
On 2009/07/05 11:21 (GMT+0100) Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis composed: Felix Miata wrote: On 2009/07/04 10:13 (GMT+0100) Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis composed: Felix Miata wrote: Zoom, minimum text size and magnifiers are defense mechanisms. The basic problem is the pervasive offense - not respecting users' font size choices by incorporating them at 100% for the bulk of content. Thus, an even better way to address presbyopia is to design to make defenses unnecessary in the first place. I'm dubious about the rhetoric here: That you call it rhetoric doesn't make it so. Too small text is #1 user complaint: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html That's not quite what the article says. Bad fonts was the biggest complaint from Nielsen's readers, but that category includes frozen font sizes and low contrast, not just small font sizes. The entire text: Bad fonts won the vote by a landslide, getting almost twice as many votes as the #2 mistake. About two-thirds of the voters complained about small font sizes or frozen font sizes; about one-third complained about low contrast between text and background. To suppose Frozen means anything other than frozen undersize would be a difficult supposition to support, as one need only peruse the web to see how rare frozen at or larger than default can be found. Thus, disrespectful (smaller than default) font sizes were and _are_ the #1 (foundational) problem, with other font issues lagging. W3 recommends 100%: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size Recommends has a technical sense when it comes to W3C, and this isn't a formal recommendation: While the tips are carefully reviewed by the participants of the [Quality Assurance Interest] group, they should not be seen as anything else than informative bits of wisdom, and especially, they are not normative W3C technical specifications. Keyword: W I S D O M Designers who implement that wise advice are wise. As do others, e.g.: http://tobyinkster.co.uk/article/web-fonts/ http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/fontsize.html http://informationarchitects.jp/100e2r/?v=4 http://fm.no-ip.com/auth/bigdefaults.html http://www.cameratim.com/personal/soapbox/morons-in-webspace#hard-to-read-fonts The claims I was trying to question were: Claim 1: Browser defaults always represent user choice. Actual choice, of course not always. Safest presumption of choice, very much yes. Any other presumption, which is what use of non-defaults makes, is a poor foundation on which to build in usability and/or accessibility. This claim 1 is addressed by the major point of Inkster article. Claim 2: Acceptance of publisher font size suggestions is not a valid user choice. If by publisher you mean browser and/or desktop environment vendor(s), it's a logical presumption to make, and a superior one to presuming that disrespecting defaults (non-100%) can improve the experience for more than degrade the experience. If by publisher you mean site designer, I'm not sure I understand your claim. If you assume an actual user setting is not a valid choice, whether made or not, actively or otherwise, you still have no basis to determine your disregard of or necessarily arbitrary adjustment to those settings can be better for the users than whatever was set by or for the users. IOW, there's no practical and legitimate way for any designer to logically come up with something different that is globally better. Claim 3: Publisher font size suggestions are an offence against user choice in some way that typeface and color suggestions are not. Trouble with the size, the foundation of legibility, usually overwhelms the impact of typeface and color, which is not the same thing as saying the latter have no impact at all. Generally the designer can reduce legibility by changing face/color, but not globally improve materially WRT legibility of the defaults. All the browsers by default use reasonably legible typefaces, and black on white. Black on white is presumptively best, like most quality books and most magazine pages use. A reduced contrast can help only for a subset of the universe, mostly those who have displays set to excessive brightness and/or contrast. Those with such displays should correct for themselves. OTOH, there are those who must use tired old displays, often with brightness and contrast _incapable_ of being restored upwards to near optimal. Most of the authorities you cite agree with Claim 1 but none offer any argument for Claims 1 or 2. As to 1, what's to argue? As to 2, maybe they wouldn't understand your point either? Most contradict Claim 3. In Nielsen's survey of his readers, a third complained about poor color contrast. Oliver Reichenstein discusses how bad contrast can reduce legibility, and your own article says to be legible, text needs enough contrast. Toby Inkster and Stephen Poley both discuss how typeface choice can render text hard
Re: [WSG] Accessible websites
On 2009/07/02 08:46 (GMT-0700) Dennis Lapcewich composed: The technical term is presbyopia, a physical inability of the lens of the eye to focus properly. Specifically, the lens loses its elasticity and ability to properly focus on near objects. It is a natural course of aging. Onset is often between the ages of 40-50, however, it has been seen at earlier ages. In web terms, one's ability to obtain information from computer monitors (web pages) will decrease as one ages, without correction. The normal method of correction is bifocal lenses, even trifocal lenses in some cases. As pointed out in another email in this thread, taking advantage of a browser's magnifications abilities through accessibility coding techniques is an excellent example to address this. Zoom, minimum text size and magnifiers are defense mechanisms. The basic problem is the pervasive offense - not respecting users' font size choices by incorporating them at 100% for the bulk of content. Thus, an even better way to address presbyopia is to design to make defenses unnecessary in the first place. It's rather difficult to overstate the issue when over the course of time, presbyopia is pretty much 100 percent universal within the human population. -- No Jesus - No peace , Know Jesus - Know Peace Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessible websites
On 2009/07/02 15:20 (GMT-0400) Rick Faircloth composed: Felix Miata wrote: Zoom, minimum text size and magnifiers are defense mechanisms. The basic problem is the pervasive offense - not respecting users' font size choices by incorporating them at 100% for the bulk of content. Thus, an even better way to address presbyopia is to design to make defenses unnecessary in the first place. It's rather difficult to overstate the issue when over the course of time, presbyopia is pretty much 100 percent universal within the human population. But how will you magnify the images and layout as designed for me to view? Respectful design obviates the need. Addressing font issues is only the absolute basic attempt to make the web more accessible...It's important to be able to see how something is said and with what supporting content and context, rather than just what is said. It certainly is important to be able to see. Thus, you're creating the handicap that needs the defense mechanism when you make it harder to see by sizing text smaller than the visitor's preference. With the exception of background images, other objects besides the text when sized with reference to the text size automatically adjusted as necessary. Context is thus preserved - automatically, by the web browser. Focusing on font-size is quite an antiquated, limited view of accessiblity. It's the foundational starting point from which everything else can and _should_ be referenced. The visitor has presumptively set that point before reaching any web site, and it can work well if the designer/coder accepts whatever that may happen to be. The designer/coder does that by dispensing with the px unit for sizing, replacing it with the visitor's preset point of reference: the em unit. Magnification of entire monitor screens (not just decreasing resolution), and browser magnification address all the issues, and in a very satisfying and simple manner, rather than asking/requiring web designers/developers to spend countless hours trying to code around the issues. By dispensing with the impossible to achieve goal of pixel perfection, and using em instead of px to size, the only thing to work around is how to size background images. That is often very easily worked around by simply not using background images. -- No Jesus - No peace , Know Jesus - Know Peace Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] website fonts
On 2009/06/22 12:58 (GMT+1000) James Ellis composed: Fonts : Nothing to stop anyone from specifying a font list and the generic family at the end of the list. That way you can aim for the font you like best, then the font which most people have (they may be the same) and then less common fonts you still want to display, then the family. e.g I did a site primarily for linux users and specified the font as: DejuVu Sans Condensed, FreeSans, Helvetica, Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans- serif; The first two are quite common on Linux (Liberation is also a good, open source, Verdana like font), Helvetica is a common Mac font, the last three pick up 99.% (tm) of the slack and sans-serif picks up those browsers without any of them installed. Once you get to sans-serif, you are at the mercy of how the user or org has configured the browser for sans-serif display. Some may set it to Times Roman, some to Comic Sans. It'd be nice to try and avoid that ;) To put what you wrote another way, with a font family list such as your example, the visitor is at the designer's mercy to see only the designer's choice of fonts, instead of the visitor's, even if the visitor has spent big money on high quality but uncommon fonts and chosen as default one of them. To actually see his choice, the visitor will have to set is browser to completely ignore the designer's font choices throughout all documents. Like Mark, I say let the visitor's choice be the choice applied to most content, with the designer specifying otherwise only to highlight or provide character, as in headings, emphasis, or menuing. On body at least, it should be enough to specify either serif or sans-serif (partial deference to visitor), or nothing at all (total deference to visitor). If the visitor wants Comic Sans, let him have it. It's his puter, not yours. -- Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.Proverbs 23:5 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Box model in IE7
On 2009/04/24 20:34 (GMT+1000) daniel a. thornbury composed: On 24/04/2009, at 7:47 PM, Rimantas Liubertas wrote: And there is NOTHING wrong with pixel sizes. On 2009/04/24 12:47 (GMT+0300) Rimantas Liubertas composed: On the contrary, everything is wrong with pixel sizing fonts, because any size in px totally disregards the size the visitor has set in his browser prefs, I wouldn't agree with Felix's statement at all, and tend to think Rimantas is correct - there is NOTHING wrong with px font sizes. They are not absolute According to the CSS spec, it is correct that px font sizes are not absolute. However, what it says is that px is relative to the viewing device. Well, that's little short of an oxymoron. On modern flat panel displays, you don't change the display, nor its resolution. As a consequence, on any given system with such a display, px is functionally absolute - it is what it is and you don't get to change it. and browsers are able to modify the size... The whole point of a browser having a default size that is independent of everything else on the desktop is that the user can personalize it to best suit his needs. Whatever the size is that he makes it should be respected by the web designer as best suited to the majority of the content. ...without any problems. Hardly. Designers have different ideas about right size. It's not particularly often that one can browse from one web site to another unrelated one, and find that the fonts are not different in size. If OTOH most designers were respecting user personalization, most fonts on most sites would be pretty much just as the user prefers them, and the defenses of minimum font size, style disabling, and zoom, would rarely be needed. Likewise, font sizes are irrelevant for accessibility. All accessibility software and screen readers should be able to scale the fonts accordingly, if not then it's an issue with the accessibility software. It's easier to keep track of em and percentage sizes for site wide but px is You've jumped over a huge web-using population, those between those with perfect and near-perfect vision, and those requiring assistive technology. Accessibility isn't just about special software and hardware to create accessibility for those with extreme handicaps. Far more people have mild to moderate visual limitation. For these people, this is very much an accessibility issue. People in this category don't need special hardware or software. The tools that can work for them are part of standard operating systems and browsers in the form of personalization features. All they need for those personalizations to work satisfactorily is for designers to respect them. Since designing totally in px totally disregards those personalizations, and even disregards the settings shipped by the system vendors, px designs are de facto non-accessible, and offensive. To access such sites, it is necessary to employ the above enumerated defense mechanisms. Without the offense, the defense would not be necessary. Joe Clarke gave a great presentation on this at @media 2007 titled When Web Accessibility Is Not Your Problem, notes available here: http://joeclark.org/appearances/atmedia2007/#fonts That's largely a dishonest defense of laziness, and rudeness. To say that CSS is mere suggestion is certainly correct technically. In the real world it is not. It is much too difficult to competently disregard the suggestions, which transforms CSS from suggestion to compulsion for the vast majority of web surfers. -- A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control. Proverbs 29:11 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] IE6 support [was: PNG - how cross-browser standard reliable?]
On 2009/04/30 21:43 (GMT+1000) Mathew Robertson composed: This argument is circular, either a) the company has the coders available to create the IE6-specific tool and thus can upgrade the tool to use a later version of the browser, or b) they dont have coders and thus they couldn't have developed the IE6-specific product. Or, they had access to coders who provided them only binaries without source code, and those coders are no longer available, with the result that the custom application would have to be rewritten from scratch by other coders to work properly with other browsers. This scenario is a common price one pays for dependence on closed source software. -- He who works his land will have abundant food, but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty. Proverbs 28:19 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Firefox Ignoring Stylesheets
On 2009/04/29 10:50 (GMT-0700) CK composed: Well aware this is not a Firefox forum, but FF 3.0.9 in OS X 10.5.6 is ignoring both print and screen stylesheets for the following: http://www.markboulton.co.uk/examples/guardian/ Has anyone a suggestion? Contact the site admin and have him fix his broken server, which claims those CSS files are type text/HTML. Firefox is just obeying the broken server. -- He who works his land will have abundant food, but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty. Proverbs 28:19 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Box model in IE7
On 2009/04/24 12:47 (GMT+0300) Rimantas Liubertas composed: And there is NOTHING wrong with pixel sizes. On the contrary, everything is wrong with pixel sizing fonts, because any size in px totally disregards the size the visitor has set in his browser prefs, and thus cannot be expected to be pleasant, or even legible. The worst feature of the CSS legacy given designers last century is this ability to totally disregard the wishes of the visitor by sizing in px. OTOH, fonts sized to medium (1em, 100%) have a reasonable, if not high, and thus much better, chance of being exactly perfect for the visitor. -- He who works his land will have abundant food, but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty. Proverbs 28:19 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Where is browser compatibility in wcag?
On 2009/04/08 07:16 (GMT+0100) Matthew Pennell composed: A user's choice of technology is not an accessibility issue. If people want to view content on the web, they have to make sure they are using suitable hardware and software - using a 10-year-old browser doesn't qualify, IMO. The antithesis to this is that everyone should endeavor to have the latest hardware, as well as the lastest software versions, which often requires newish hardware. A requirement for newish hardware is a an ecologically bankrupt position to take. Our landfills have been filling up much too fast for much too long. Better to help old hardware stay out of landfills as long as possible by any *reasonable* means. To me reasonable means ensuring a site is usable without Flash, JS, images capability, or a competent modern browser. If you're not up to speed on the current state of the ecology, I recommend watching this movie: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0950758/ -- He who works his land will have abundant food, but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty. Proverbs 28:19 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] PDFs and other non-html files opening in a new browser window
On 2009/02/05 16:30 (GMT-0500) Carolyn Diaz composed: My Web team and I are discussing whether or not we should open links to PDFs and other non-html pages in a new window. Someone cited Jakob Nielsen's argument at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/open_new_windows.html as the reason we should open in a new window. (We all work on government Web sites and they are about to release a new set of linking standards.) I know this is an old school type question, but we are very divided about this. The people on our usability team are with Nielsen, but others (like me) are not so sure. Isn't accessibility to new windows a problem as it changes the focus? What do you think? Jakob is right, about everything on that page, in particular: best of all, prevent the browser from opening the document. -- Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up. Ephesians 4:29 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Opera Targeting?!
On 2009/02/04 09:19 (GMT-0500) Brett Patterson composed: Okay, one quick question. You say 200% is twice the default size, but in browsers like Firefox 3, there is only the (shortcut) Ctrl++ to zoom in, and I cannot find the percentage of that zoom, so is 200% font size increasement one or two clicks? Firefox is a Gecko browser with a minimalistic feature set. Another Gecko browser, SeaMonkey, with a more extensive native feature set, lets you choose directly the % you want. It has selectable presets in its view menu. Among them, the third is 200%, which might lead one to believe it would take 3 successive shortcuts to reach 200% in FF. However, http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-1.9.1/rev/1d6410485164 shows that's what it used to be, and what it was changed to (6). A quick look shows current FF3 appears to take 6 steps to reach 200%. Try FF2 or SM release if you wish fewer steps to get there. -- Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up. Ephesians 4:29 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Opera Targeting?!
On 2009/02/03 15:13 (GMT-0500) Brett Patterson composed: On 2009/02/03 19:54 (GMT+0100) Gunlaug Sørtun composed: I really don't understand what you mean, when you say: It's a designer-bug. Vertical position of the navigation relies entirely on font size, which means it is all over the place in my browsers on first load. Users' browser defaults, and minimum text sizes, and zoom levels, vary, mostly upward from the sizes designers prefer. As a consequence, positioning with font size as the base reference usually means unpredictability of results in the wild. ...using pixels for a font size... Px for sizing text is your affirmative design choice that whatever text sizes are acceptable to or preferred by your design's visitors are utterly irrelevant, and not a matter of design consideration. -- Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up. Ephesians 4:29 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Opera Targeting?!
On 2009/02/03 15:18 (GMT-0500) Brett Patterson composed: There are patches for Internet Explorer, though Microsoft calls them several different things, it could be a Security Update for Internet Explorer, a Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer, or even a Security Update for Windows (maybe worded differently on the last one). They just update IE differently then all the other browsers update their own. Microsoft does not really use v3.0.8 like Firefox would, 9.26 like Opera would, etc. Fixes to stable released versions of web browsers are virtually always fixes to security flaws. Fixes to rendering engines are nearly always reserved for development versions and applied prior to new/significant a new version release intended to be a replacement for a prior stable release. -- Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up. Ephesians 4:29 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] CSS font-size-adjust
On 2008/10/21 18:14 (GMT+0700) Rob Schumann composed: Christian Montoya wrote on 20-10-2008: http://unitinteractive.com/blog/2008/06/26/better-css-font-stacks/ Back in September 2006 I wrote a piece that reached some similar conclusions to that above http://www.webspaceworks.com/resources/fonts-web-typography/60/ Neither of those take into account the recent and current states of FOSS fonts. It would be nice to see yours updated to take into account: 1-DejaVu is a continually developed and better hinted superset of no longer developed Bitstream Vera that has replaced Vera in most Linux distros for several years now. An installation of the OpenOffice.org 3.0 w/ JRE package on WinXP results in 21 DejaVu*ttf files being added to \WINDOWS\Fonts. 2-The Liberation font suite was developed to function as an alternative to installing the Microsoft Core Web Fonts package on Linux. Its single metric equivalent serif (Liberation Serif=Times New Roman), sans-serif (Liberation Sans=Arial/Helvetica) and monospace (Liberation Mono=Lucida Console/Courier New) components are available either by default or as an option with installation of most recent and current Linux distros. 3-Linux fontconfig provides a font stack for fallback. For purposes of this thread, I've made available three examples from major distros: Fedora 10 http://fm.no-ip.com/tmp/Linux/45-latin.conf-fc10 Mandriva 2009 http://fm.no-ip.com/tmp/Linux/45-latin.conf-mdv2009 openSUSE 11.1 http://fm.no-ip.com/tmp/Linux/suse-post-user.conf We have been told in a (IIRC) Novell Bugzilla comment by the fonts team leader Mike Fabian that openSUSE's order within its alias file was set primarily dependent on font quality, particularly in the areas of charset coverage, byte code and hinting. Contrast that to the other two, which leave x-height pretty much a non-issue, seen by the separation between DejaVu Sans and Verdana in both files. -- Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. James 1:19 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] CSS font-size-adjust
On 2008/10/21 23:40 (GMT+0700) Rob Schumann composed: I've updated the aspect-ratio/x-widths article to include the 6 'C' fonts of Vista http://www.webspaceworks.com/resources/fonts-web-typography/43/ At some point you might want to mention that, unlike most monospace fonts, which match each other in width at most or all sizes, Consolas in many common sizes renders considerably narrower, as if called in the next smaller size. You should be able to see examples on http://fm.no-ip.com/auth/Font/fonts-face-samplesM.html Updates for other fonts, and to bring font availability tables up-to-date will follow later. Looking forward to it. :-) -- Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. James 1:19 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Browsers and Zooming
On 2008/07/03 22:32 (GMT+0100) Steve Green apparently typed: designers tend to design for a minimum screen resolution of 1024x768 while there are still a significant number of people still using lower resolutions. This is most unfortunate for all, because screen resolution should be a non-factor in designing for the web. The web is not paper. When you measure the whole design in characters, or fractions thereof, resolution does not matter. Zoom, whether text only or page, is a defense mechanism designed to counteract stupid/naive/rude design. When a design is _properly_ made using character measurements, users don't need to zoom. -- Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. Ephesians 4:26 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Firefox 3 candidate
On 2008/06/23 11:42 (GMT+0100) Steve Green apparently typed: You can still get some old versions from the Mozilla FTP site at http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ It's ludicrous that they have removed some old versions - can they really not afford the disk space? Obviously users should not be installing old versions but developers and testers still need them for testing. We download and store all the English versions but it's not practical to save all the localised versions too. They should still be there, but on http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ . That is currently redirecting to http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ which I think is broken behavior. ftp://archive.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases works. -- Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Matthew 7:12 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Firefox 3
On 2008/06/18 13:17 (GMT+0100) Paul Collins apparently typed: Does anyone know if it will replace your version of Firefox 2, or will it run side by side?! It doesn't have to. There are instructions on the mozilla.org developer pages for running as many concurrent versions of Gecko products as you wish. The particulars depend on your environment. Linux Mac Win don't all work exactly the same. Don't install as replacement before checking if extensions you depend on are ready for it. -- Where were you when I laid the earth's foudation?Matthew 7:12 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Should we design for 800x600 screens?
On 2008/06/10 13:28 (GMT+1000) IceKat apparently typed: Should we still bother designing to fit in with 800x600 screen resolutions or is it Ok to just design for 1024x768 and not worry about smaller resolutions? Never should have been designing for either one. To design for any particular resolution means you're designing against all the others. An 800x600 page on a 2560x1600 screen is little more than a postage stamp, about 12% in size measured in pixels, and definitely an unknown size measured in inches or mm. Some of the resolutions you should NOT design for (not an exhaustive list): 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1400x1050, 1600x1200, 1792x1344, 1856x1392, 1920x1440, 2048x1536, 1024x640, 1280x800, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1200, 2560x1600, 1280x720, 1366x768, 1920x1080. Erase the concept of screen resolution from your toolbox. Pixels have nothing more to do with size than the size of each other. Thinking in pixels is what print designers trying to publish to the web think in. The result of such thinking is billions of magazine pages hosted on the web, not pages designed for the users of the fluid web medium that is hosting them. Sizing in em means autosizing to the environment, and letting the environment figure out how many pixels to get the job done. It's the right way to design for the medium and the people who use it. http://essays.dayah.com/problem-with-pixels http://cssliquid.com/ -- Where were you when I laid the earth's foudation?Matthew 7:12 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Should we design for 800x600 screens?
On 2008/06/10 12:20 (GMT+0200) Gunlaug Sørtun apparently typed:
...
Since all browsers can also resize fonts (one way or another)
independent of page zoom, relative sizes risk creating even more
problems when both font resizing and page zoom are used.
The latest mobile browsers also incorporates page zoom and font resizing
in various forms in order to enhance the experience, so the more freedom
we give those browsers to perform their job the easier it'll be for the
end-user.
...
Resize as generally applied within web design discussions doesn't seem to
have have a good clear meaning. It seems to me that in most cases it is
assumed equivalent to using a text sizer or text zoom function in the browser
or built into the page with alternate stylesheets or script, tools designed
for use as defense mechanisms to be used against the designer's wish for text
some arbitrarily smaller size than whatever the user's default is (body
{font-size: 76%}), or some arbitrary size that disregards user wishes or
needs (px text sizes).
OTOH, the possibility to resize at the base level, in the browser's default
settings, gets ignored, or assumed to be something that users almost
universally leave unchanged.
As to the former we should remember that defense mechanisms, including page
zoom, are exactly what they are. When the design respectfully and competently
embraces the idea that the viewport is fluid and that not everyone uses
800x600 or 1024x768 or any particular other screen resolution default text
size, then the need to defend and the ugly consequences of defense are avoided.
Get your work to work across a reasonable range of text size to em width
viewport ratios and the need to defend is reduced; possibly, and ideally, to
zero.
--
Where were you when I laid the earth's
foudation?Matthew 7:12 NIV
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
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Re: [WSG] firefox 3 beta5
On 2008/05/20 18:27 (GMT+1000) Korny Sietsma apparently typed: I have had problems running FF2 on a machine also running FF3 - specifically, and fatally for me, FireBug wouldn't install cleanly in FF2 if I had FF3 running. Did you ever think to try closing the other long enough to get it to install? Have you been trying to use the same profile for multiple versions? Have you tried virgin profiles? Visit irc://moznet/#firefox or irc://moznet/#mozillazine or irc://moznet/#seamonkey and people who know what it takes will help you get it going. I'd load FF3 in a vmware image, or maybe test it with an Ubuntu 8.04 live CD. Absolutely unnecessary gross overkill. Release Candidate 1 is out now, so hopefully things will get more stable when Ubuntu picks it up, but at the moment it's a world of pain - at least for my configuration! I've been running various flavors of alpha beta Gecko products simultaneous with release versions of same cross-platform (Linux, OS/2 Win; adding OS X recently) for over 7 years. If you can't get it to work routinely, you're not correctly following directions, or have a general system problem. Using multiple versions does require the MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 environment variable, or equivalent command line option, plus multiple profiles. Realize that SeaMonkey and Firefox are just different faces on the same rendering engine, so you can take the easy way out and just run the devel version of one and the release version of the other if following the multiple version instructions is somehow not doable for you. -- . . . . in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you . . . . Matthew 7:12 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] firefox 3 beta5
On 2008/05/21 07:43 (GMT+1000) Korny Sietsma apparently typed: Sorry, I didn't mean if I had FF3 running - I had it *installed* but not running. And maybe I could have made it work, but I was under time pressure. I just installed FF2 through Ubuntu's standard apt system, and I'd hoped that it would be configured to install it completely independently. When I have more time I'll try again - but running a beta browser, with an alpha of FireBug, I wasn't really very surprised to have stability issues. Maybe I should have been. With Linux distros, except in unusual circumstances, and assuming more than one version exists to choose from, you have to choose only one version of an application to install through the package management system. Other versions must be installed outside the normal package management system. With Mozilla products, it's usually best to install the stable version via package management, then use bzip or whatever is required of the available development or pre-release version in question to place in your $HOME tree or /usr/local tree. If you had a problem installing a mozilla.org build, odds are you didn't have proper deps installed, probably the compat libstdc++5 library, or whatever the Debian system calls it, or a new enough pango. Another option if you want FF3 as your main (via package management) but to keep FF2 for testing is to use Epiphany in lieu of FF2. Plans have been made to switch Epiphany from Gecko to Webkit, but I don't think that will happen before FF2 has had time to nearly die. Oh, and FF3rc1 was out 3 days ago. If Debian sources now have the v3rc available, it may be time to think about instead making it your normal, and installing the mozilla.org release of FF 2.0.0.14 in $HOME or /usr/local. -- . . . . in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you . . . . Matthew 7:12 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] firefox 3 beta5
On 2008/05/20 15:13 (GMT+1200) Paul Bennett apparently typed: Ack! Anyone else had horrible problems installing FF3? No, but ... My install crashes every time I open it, so I had to reinstall FF2.. I avoid installing applications whenever possible. In the case of unreleased Gecko products, it's more than just possible, it's often preferable. Get yourself an archive build instead of an installer build from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ and see if you have better luck. There's no reason you can't have both on the same machine at the same time, though an extra step or three are required to enable using both at the same time, and you're probably better off not using a profile previously used with FF3 to use with FF2. -- . . . . in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you . . . . Matthew 7:12 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Full flash websites
On 2008/05/05 23:15 (GMT+0300) Michael Persson apparently typed: What do you people, professionals and hobby standardists think about full flash websites?? OK for people whose priorities lie in form rather than substance, but generally no small impediment for many others. Flash players do not exist for every GUI web browsing environment, and AFAIK, they exist for no text-only browsing environment. The exclusivity means lockout, both to real users, and search bots. where is the usability and accessibility for flash in general?? As a practical matter, non-existent. As long as Flash content ignores browser default text size (same as CSS px font sizing) and text zoom (worse than CSS px font sizing), it locks out the many people who can't read its virtually universal mousetype or make sense of its itty bitty images. Flash is functionally a synonym for content-free for an arbitrarily large number of people, sighted users with low vision (or even average vision) and/or using high resolution displays. -- . . . . in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you . . . . Matthew 7:12 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] IE8 news
On 2008/03/06 20:09 (GMT) Ben Dodson apparently typed: My main hope is that the number of IE6 users will decrease rapidly as there are still over 20% of the market according to the W3C statistics. Apparently Microsoft were going to do a forced upgrade from IE6 to IE7 at the end of Feb but I don't know how well that has gone (or if it has at all). IE6 won't be going away before W2K goes away, unless IE7 and/or IE8 is released for W2K. Last I checked, WGA didn't apply to W2K, leaving it as the only supported yet readily pirate-able doz version. The impact on XP is similar. Those not opting to allow WGA installation or attempt it but fail cannot upgrade from IE6. -- Let us not love with words or in talk only. Let us love by what we do. 1 John 3:18 NLV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Controling Windows DPI settings
On 2008/02/23 18:14 (GMT-0800) Hayden's Harness Attachment apparently typed: I have Windows Vista Home Premium and use 96 DPI. I am told repeteated ly that my fonts are to large. Probably you should offer example URLs of pages about which that complaint is made. I have even tried font-size: 80%; in my CSS and still get told the fonts are to large. All pages on which such CSS is used produces too small text in my browsers. I know you are not able to overide a person's preferences. can I do something in CSS to change the default DPI and/or font-size? And then create different CSS files to increase the DPI and/or font-sizes? Real DPI is a function of the combination of display size, and the actual resolution used. Windows defaults to (assumes) 96 DPI regardless of display size or resolution, but in recent years the manufacturers have been presetting their higher resolution Windows models with a just as arbitrary 120 instead of 96. The upshot is there is nothing about DPI that you can or should want to do anything about, except for the displays you have physical control over. The best thing you can do when anyone complains about text size in your web pages is point out that their browser defaults can be adjusted so suit their tastes, and explain that there are too many possible variations on local environments for you to assume anything other than a 100% of default text size base for your pages makes any logical sense. Those using modern browsers have a feature that enables visitors to select from among optional stylesheets, so you do have the means to cater to users who can't be bothered to suitably adjust their own environments to suit their own needs. Whether you can justify spending the time to use that function only you can answer, but if you use a lot of low contrast, wild colors, or small text, it's probably a really good idea to include alternative stylesheets with more conservative colors and/or other text size options. -- For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Site review - alachua co library
On 2008/02/27 18:39 (GMT+1100) John Hancock apparently typed: Here's a screenshot of a typical moderately high resolution environment: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/SC/sc-alaclib1.jpg and the setup source: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/tmp/sc-alaclib1.html Just a thought, but a moderately high resolution environment to me is a setup of over 3mpx. For instance, dual 20 TFTs, dual 19 CRT or single 30 etc. A high resolution environment for me is about 7.5mpx. While I'm aware that your mileage may vary, a 1680 x 1200 pixel screen size is certainly not a standard one! I was hoping anyone who noticed that would just ignore it. I don't use flat panel displays, because they are just not suited to alternative screen resolutions desirable for thorough testing. What you see there in 1680x1200 is a virtual resolution, while the screenshot itself is exactly the fullscreen px size of typical 22 desktop displays now common in stores, and of typical 16 17 laptops. The actual physical resolution is UXGA 1600x1200, with an 80px wide virtual addition. On Linux, nearly any virtual resolution is possible without fancy hardware or additional software. :-) Thus I'm really curious about your definition of a standard one! The standard LCDs now commonly available at retail new are: XGA 1024x768 (4:3) (slightly low, usually 15) SXGA 1280x1024 (5:4) (standard or base, almost exclusively 17 or 19) WXGA 1280x800 (16:10) (standard or base, 11.1 to 15.4) SXGA+ 1400x1050 (4:3) (standard or base, 20) WXGA+ 1440x900 (16:10) (slightly high, 16 to 21) WSXGA+ 1680x1050 (16:10) (moderately high, 16 to 23) UXGA 1600x1200 (4:3) (high, 20 to 22) WUXGA 1920x1200 (16:10) (high, 16 to 27) Naturally the meanings vary according to whether desktop or laptop, as the average PPI for laptops is much higher than for desktops, which is why the common 120 DPI replacement for 96 DPI is provided by laptop OEMs. The Standard Panels Working Group (SPWG) isn't the fastest moving of organisations, admittedly, but you'll find that they're usually ratifying 16:10 aspect ratios as standard - something to consider when designing sites. Additionally, those of us with extremely large working areas should usually have a 17 TFT or lower to test on for 'the great unpixeled'. Or a large CRT and a small CRT, which can provide the utility of at least 3 LCDs - each! Most panels just don't have usable optional resolutions. -- For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Site review - alachua co library
On 2008/02/25 10:31 (GMT-0500) Andrew Maben apparently typed: I'm almost done with a site redesign, and the time is right to ask for your opinions: http://beta.www.aclib.us for comparison, the current site is: http://www.aclib.us ... Of course accessibility is important, and this is where your insights and criticisms can be especially helpful. http://www.andrewmaben.net [EMAIL PROTECTED] It's quite a bit better than its close neighbor http://www.ufl.edu/ and better in some ways than the original, but worse in others. I really don't like the artificial width constraint that the original lacks. Width should only be constrained to less than 100% of the window width to the extent wider would produce too long line lengths for comfortable reading. There's no chance of that on the new page, while quite a bit of it looks over-constrained without enlarging the text, and most of it does with text enlargement. The other problem is the same as most of the web, too much too small text. Nearly right smack dab in the middle of above the fold content is what looks like primary content, yet it's shrunken to the size of UI text, smaller than the menu text, creating the inference that it's less important than other content. Most of the text-in-image content is illegible or nearly so on median or higher resolution displays. Those using the most expensive laptops will not be pleased at the mousetype effect of africanamerican_history_onli.gif hot_topics/webfeat.jpg or the last line of acld_Logo.gif. Foreground images can and in many cases should be scaled up to match surrounding text, and these are some of those cases. At least the original is blatantly up front about enabling large enough to read text. Here's a screenshot of a typical moderately high resolution environment: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/SC/sc-alaclib1.jpg and the setup source: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/tmp/sc-alaclib1.html The main branch used to be about a 10 minute walk from where I lived. If I still lived just a bit closer I might be inclined to ride over to the main branch, find the manager, and complain about waste of money on a redesign that doesn't amount to much readily apparent improvement. Maybe its only real goal is to get people in to read printed material that doesn't suffer from the web's normally too small text, but if that's it, the address and phone number should be at least as big as it is in the phone book. :-p -- For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Developing for Mac Browsers
On 2008/01/15 12:05 (GMT+1000) Tate Johnson apparently typed: From my experience, Konqueror and Safari render pages identically. In addition, now that Safari is available on Windows ... there is virtually no difference between browsers that are available on Windows, OS X and Linux. Essentially, each browser utilises a rendering engine of which there are four popular types. They are Trident (IE), Gecko (Mozilla, Firefox, Camino), KHTML/Webkit (Konqueror, Safari, Shiira) and Preseto (Opera). However, bugs sometime creep in to platform specific versions of these implementations. The differences across platform are commonly enough to discern. The reason is the font rendering engines differ not only across plaforms, but also versions and implementations within the platforms, particularly Linux, where differences between byte code interpretation or not are usually unmistakable. This is true even when the exact same font files are the source the rendering engines use. I spot differences in line-height easily and routinely, even with line-height explicitly specified in the CSS. -- In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] BBC in Beta
On 2007/12/17 15:30 (GMT) Paul McCann apparently typed: Heads up, the BBC has a new site in Beta. http://www.bbc.co.uk/home/beta Thoughts/praise/comments :) I guess they discovered 800x600 is an anachronism, so made it wider. Still objects are sized in px, so with fonts forced big enough to read at high resolution, line lengths are too short and/or overlap and/or extend beyond containers. CSS hard to evaluate, with no line feeds in the whole file. It has display options, but that needs work. And, it's another Clagnut type, suffering the usual effects when viewed with user stylesheet or minimum font size employed in Gecko. http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Clagnut/eonsSS Overall, better, but, worse than good. -- Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Opera files antitrust against MS: standards one part
On 2007/12/14 09:42 (GMT-0500) Michael Horowitz apparently typed: A monopoly is when government gives someone the ability to legally ban competitors. You've provided a rough definition of a legal monopoly. An entity convicted of the felony of monopolistic predation as M$ has been falls into the different and much more common traditional and illegal class of monopoly. -- Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Opera files antitrust against MS: standards one part
On 2007/12/14 08:19 (GMT-0500) Michael Horowitz apparently typed: I can't see why government should be enforcing standards. Shouldn't that be a decision of private companies, developers and users not government? In the absence of dominating monopoly, sure. -- Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Opera files antitrust against MS: standards one part
On 2007/12/13 23:04 (GMT-0500) Christian Snodgrass apparently typed: I think if IE was standards-compliant, we wouldn't be seeing this. Mostly I agree, but also I think another issue is that too many people think IE *is* THE internet, and don't know better, or even any, other options exist for finding www.isawitontv.com with their puter. -- Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Disabling Fonts in Font Stacks
On 2007/11/29 07:19 (GMT+1000) Adam Martin apparently typed: What I do is set a base font size (declared on the body) of 10px. All other fonts are then set using em - 2em is equal to 20px, 1.3em is 13px etc etc. For Gecko browser users, that creates an undesirable impact, which is demonstrated at http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Clagnut/eonsSS and explained in more detail at http://www.gunlaug.no/contents/wd_1_03_04.html -- A patriot without religion . . . is as great a paradox, as an honest man without the fear of God. John Adams Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Disabling Fonts in Font Stacks
On 2007/11/28 16:55 (GMT-0500) Christian Montoya apparently typed: If you use pixels for font-sizing, the text will be the same size regardless of which font is used. Technically that's both true and false. According to the CSS applied to cause the result, a px is a px is a px, which means 10px Verdana is the same size as 10px Times New Roman. However, the physical size is not always well represented by the CSS size. Everybody here should know already that 10px Verdana looks bigger than 10px Times New Roman, but in case anyone's short of clues on this issue, take a look at the bottom half of http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/fonts-comps-verd-v-times . -- A patriot without religion . . . is as great a paradox, as an honest man without the fear of God. John Adams Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Disabling Fonts in Font Stacks
On 2007/11/28 18:23 (GMT) James Leslie apparently typed: I've been looking over some inherited sites and noticed a very common font-family declaration of arial, verdana, helvetica, sans-serif. I Funny you should mention those three: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/fonts-comps-verdariahelv know that arial and verdana are very different in size so thought it would be good to make sure there are not any problems with one font not being available, but aside from changing the stylesheet or removing the font, I don't seem to be able to do this. I don't think anyone can without changing the stylesheet, but a fairly easy way to make a temporary change is a toolbox option like Web Developer's edit CSS. Removing and replacing fonts at the system or user level is generally really clumsy. Does anyone know if there is a way of disabling a font at the browser level, maybe a firefox plug-in, to be able to do quick checks on legibility, sizing issues, layout, etc. One way is to strip all all font-families from your CSS except for the generics, serif, sans-serif monospace. Then you need only change the family specified as your browser default to see what that particular font works like. Not specifying families leaves visitors an opportunity to see what they prefer instead of what you specify, something few web sites do any more. To make it possibly easier, leave font-families out of your default sheet(s), and create an alternate stylesheet with nothing but each family you wish to test with, selectable from every good browser's menu system. They very well can all be left that way when the site goes public. -- A patriot without religion . . . is as great a paradox, as an honest man without the fear of God. John Adams Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/07 10:31 (GMT+0100) Rick Lecoat apparently typed: On a side note, I can't help but notice that almost every site that has been cited as a reference for reasons why default text size should not be tampered with has a very minimal level of 'design styling'. For example: http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/2S/font.htm http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020819.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/bigdefaults.html http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/essence.html Not everyone expects the same thing from the WWW, just as not every page is designed by a designer, just as not every page author places the same relative importance on appearance compared to content. Sometimes simplicity is the design, or part of the design. Those pages share one common purpose - conveying information - by people who believe the message is more important than the style. In every case, legibility will not be a problem for their visitors whose UA is reasonably configured. They would all convey the same message if styled as this: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/bigdefaultsb Now, I'm not going to dispute that these are very accessible sites from a type-size perspective. And, yes, they present their information without unnecessary distraction. But I can also guarantee that if I took a 'design' like that of any of those sites to a client, said client would be out the door and off to my competitors faster than I could say Accessibility. Their goals are message conveyance, not facilitating exit or entertaining visually. Navigation there is incidental or unnecessary. Distractions are definitely undesired. Since none are designs as the term is ordinarily used by designers, they aren't intended as and shouldn't be used as examples of design, unless the context is one of usability or accessibility discussion, or the client is a Joe Friday (just the facts, no nonsense) type. Maybe it's just coincidence. But none of those sites telling me that I can create perfectly nice-looking, commercially viable designs using default text sizes have actually put their design-money where their mouth is. That's inaccurate, though sites that profess and/or urge accessibility and/or usability commonly don't put their money where there mouth is either http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/access-lipservice . Simple examples: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/dlviolin http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/dancesrq.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/ *That does not make the points they raise wrong*, but it means that it feels a bit like having my dress sense criticised by someone wearing a dirty t-shirt and torn sweat pants. I wouldn't equate clean and uncluttered pages to tattered and dirty clothes. Maybe more like criticizm for wearing inappropriate attire, like thongs or pasties, in places ordinary adults and children frequent, like shopping malls, or an evening gown to the beach, or work uniforms to a funeral. Design should fit purpose. Simple purpose, simple design. -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/06 09:13 (GMT-0400) Timothy Swan apparently typed: I'd tend to agree with those that using the browser defaults as the base font size would be ideal. Unfortunately we're dealing with years of legacy web pages where the vast majority of fonts have been sized down already (in my own unscientific study, over 90% of the sites I sampled had the base p set to give an equivalent of 12-13 pixels.) I disagree. I think 90% applies to sites that size to any degree below 100%, with a significant enough portion sizing at 10px and 11px that the 12px-13px group is significantly less than 90%. More importantly, because of the dropping average display DPI, 12-13px isn't as big as it used to be. Do you think making text even smaller than yesteryear is the right thing for a modern, accessible, usable page to do? The side-effect of this is that if you use 100%, the font-size on your site will be much larger than on every other site the viewer visits. This is bad why? Larger, yes. Much larger, debatable. How do you know those sites aren't getting back button treatment, or unanswered complaints? It's not rocket science to see that if the New York Times (base body 84.5%), Google (base body 12px), and Yahoo (base body 84.5%) all use smaller base font sizes, using 100% will result in fonts that look much larger than normal. Maybe to most people, but what about to people who have discovered zoom and minimum font size? To them, those/most sites will typically have problems with overlapping or hidden text, along with nearly right or right sized text in containers constraining them to too narrow line lengths. This is not a discussion of philosophy but of practicality. I want my visitors to be able to resize the text to fit their needs, but I also want my site to adhere to a widely accepted standard, which is *not* 16px. That widely accepted standard is becoming one of broken pages, the result of zoom and minimum font size. Do you want yours classified among them, or differentiated among elite? -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/06 17:58 (GMT+0100) Tony Crockford apparently typed: If you don't adjust the font size at all it looks bigger than expected to *most* users This is only a problem if you choose to regard it as a problem. Neither is what users want and expect necessarily the same thing. Being part of a majority doesn't not necessarily make you or the majority right. - and if the client is looking at their site compared to everyone else they also expect it to look similar, not have massive fonts. You're the expert. Your clientele is a limited universe you can try to educate. You could offer it a look at some authoritative sites that both exhibit respect and recommend respect. -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/06 13:08 (GMT-0400) Timothy Swan apparently typed: If the text containers are elastic and resize as the text is resized, this shouldn't be a major problem. The comparison was made to most other sites. Most other sites are neither standards compliant nor elastic. You're arguing that people should use the browser defaults as the base; I'm arguing that long ago Long ago is a point I've made upthread more than one, which seems to get ignored each time it was determined by *most* website designers Contrary to the determinations of the computer operating system designers and web browser designers. that 16 pixels was too large (I'm *not* arguing whether that was the correct decision.) Roughly a decade ago. In the meantime, the average size of a px has been decreasing, as a consequence of the average increase in display DPI. It may have been correct for the time, but it's gone stale, particularly since the variance has also grown. There were no touchscreens or handhelds or 11 WXGA laptops then, nor 30 LCDs. Then as now, you don't know how big 16px is except for the 16px right in front of your face. -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/06 20:16 (GMT+0100) Tony Crockford apparently typed:
On 6 Sep 2007, at 18:30, Felix Miata wrote:
You're the expert. Your clientele is a limited universe you can try
to educate. You could offer it a look at some authoritative sites
that both exhibit respect and recommend respect.
but sadly, in my world, they don't.
Don't what? Don't understand your instruction? Don't believe your instruction?
Don't let you try to instruct them? Don't look at the good example sites you
offer them? ? ? ?
The majority is what they want to *be* like.
The majority always gets it right, right? Inertia is easy to overcome, right?
Do they understand that it's good business to treat customers right, which on
the WWW means big, easy-to-read text?
http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/top-10/
I'm still looking for a best practice solution to reducing font size
to the *norm* and not causing problems when I do so.
have you any suggestions on that front?
If you want an answer based upon experience, it can't really come from here,
because I only do 100% basing, and defensive training.
The least intrusive method is building the site such that it can continue to
nicely function no matter what size is set on body, which in essence is the
functionally effective application of both different defaults than
yours, and zooming. (It's also a byproduct of good liquid/fluid/flexible
design.) By controlling the whole thing solely by the size set on body, users
also get the benefit that a simple user stylesheet can return your site
to using their default size. The whole stylesheet:
body {font-size: medium !important;}
That simplicity cannot work on sites where fonts are set on particular
elements, or via class ids or names. Anything much beyond that one rule is
beyond the capability of any besides web design professionals accustomed to
routine use of CSS.
--
It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs,
whether any free government can be permanent, where the
public worship of God, and the support of religion,
constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in
any assignable shape.
Chief Justice Joseph Story
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/
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Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/06 20:42 (GMT+0100) Tony Crockford apparently typed: I'm slightly hazy on the whole user set browser defaults thing, there seem to be a number of options including application preferences and user stylesheets. and a combination of minimum fonts, ignore all fonts and larger/smaller text settings in IE The defaults are responsible for the size and family the browser uses when neither user nor site applies CSS to elements affected by those defaults, and presentational font markup is not employed on those elements. IE's font smallest/smaller/medium/larger/largest selector in effect is one (crude and defective) mechanism that sets its default (the other one is the system DPI selection in desktop settings). It's defective in that its setting is totally disregarded when px or absolute units are applied to size text via CSS. IE's two ignore fonts settings mean that the basic defaults are applied even when site and/or user CSS exists, plus when sites set sizes using px or absolute units. A minimum font size setting in simplistic terms means simply a size below which no text will be allowed to be rendered by the browser. Due to the manner of implementation by its programmers, Gecko browsers with a minimum font size applied will often render large portitions of a page not only larger than the minimum setting, but also larger than *its own* default size setting. The latter mostly happens when authors implement the Clagnut CSS font sizing method. http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Clagnut/eonsSS.html User stylesheets in those rare cases they exist are generally employed to override particular site CSS, rather than to affect browser defaults. so, what happens if a user has their default font set larger than the browser default in this case? Can't happen. Browser default == user default. :-p conversely what happens if they have set their default smaller than the manufacturer shipped settings? Given the same size display and the same display resolution, all web page text that is sized based on the the browser default setting will be smaller than if the shipped settings had been retained. Maybe Felix explained it, but I didn't understand it, can someone just make it simple, so I can judge the merit of this pragmatism? Oh that it should be simple, but with power, comes complexity. -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/05 13:51 (GMT+0100) Rick Lecoat apparently typed:
In a thread on the CSS-Discuss list ('Accessibility + font sizing')
David posted the following:
If accessibility is important, don't specify a font size. Leave it up to
the visitor to be using the font size they find preferable.
This revisits a question that still really vexes me [1]. Certainly, if
the focus of the site is maximum accessibility (example: a that site
deals with disability issues) then David's advice is clearly correct,
and it could be argued that it is correct for *any* site.
However, this brings us back to the fact that for many people the
browser default text size of 16px is too large
Who made this a fact? Just because web designers, a group with the following
characteristics (creating a bias among them) to distinguish it from an
average member of the general public:
1-detail oriented (more comfortable than average with small things)
2-use large computer displays
3-leave their browsers set to the defaults that they believe most people use
(untweaked to suit their own personal preferences)
4-young (have not yet reached age of deteriorating eyesight)
think it so, doesn't make it so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_assertion
OTOH, reasons to believe the (presumably) 16px default default is either just
right, or too small: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/defaultsize.html
So, as a designer, I choose between two approaches:
...
1) 'Bottom up' approach: ...
[sub-100% main content]
2) 'Top down' approach: ...
[100% main content]
This bring into question the advice of the W3C tips page http://
www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size#goodcss where it states:
1em (or 100%) is equivalent to setting the font size to the user's
preference.
The above statement makes the implicit assumption that 'Browser Default'
equals 'User's Preference', an assumption that I can't help but question.
...
It also makes the assumptions that:
1-user presumptively is the one in position to determine what works best, and
that presuming otherwise can only randomly cause an improvement.
2-the effort that went into choosing, and continuing to choose, particular
defaults by the browser suppliers who, within a small range of variance by
minor suppliers, all have the same default defaults, and that those defaults
are perfectly reasonable and close enough for most people (though not web
designers)
It's the right thing do do, because anything else is a anarchistic and rude.
See also:
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/100e2r?v=4
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html
http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/top-10/
http://css.nu/articles/font-analogy.html
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dao/
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/fontsize.html
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/essence.html
It isn't 1996 any more. Browser defaults are fine, and shouldn't be assumed
otherwise: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/bigdefaults.html
--
It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs,
whether any free government can be permanent, where the
public worship of God, and the support of religion,
constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in
any assignable shape.
Chief Justice Joseph Story
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/
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Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/05 09:19 (GMT-0700) Hassan Schroeder apparently typed: I found this article http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/custom/modernlife/bal-ml.boomer17jun17,0,5613476.story regarding the increasing availability of large-print books, which says in part: According to Lighthouse International (a group that helps people deal with loss of vision), 17 percent of Americans 45 and older have some form of visual impairment. In 2010, all boomers will have reached that milestone birthday -- a group of about 20 million -- and most will be feeling the effects of presbyopia, the inability to focus on objects close up. (By the time we hit our 40s or 50s, the elasticity of the eye naturally decreases with age, and our close-up sight is affected.) Lighthouse as more to say than just that: http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/ OK, fine -- but reading a hand-held paperback book and reading a screen a couple of feet away seem very different to me, for lots of reasons. So my question is: do we *know* that this applies to reading text /on a computer screen/? Not guess, not believe, *know*. Maybe something like this? http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/2S/font.htm And as additional answer to issue of aging boomers: http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/3W/fontSR.htm Personally, I find 16px text far too large for comfortable reading. That may well be, but you haven't said anything meaningful about how big that actually is. I find anything less than 24px too small for comfortable reading. To know how big 16px or 24px is requires knowing: 1-screen size 2-screen resolution 3-viewing distance Plus, there are factors besides size that affect reading comfort, such as contrast, leading, and line length. Had you written 12pt rather than 16px, one might assume that your system had a properly adjusted DPI and consequently that 12pt really meant 12pt, a physical size, and thus meaningful. Even so, without knowing your viewing distance, we still don't know the apparent size. This is why web pages need top down (100% based) contruction. And before anyone pulls out the dang whippersnappers card, I'm 60 years old and I've worn eyeglasses for most of 'em. :-) I'm less than that, and find 16px generally very uncomfortable or even impossible to read, depending on time of day and how tired my eyes are from squinting at mousetype, and how tired my back is from leaning forward to try to see enough to decide whether to hit my overworked zoom keys once more, or hit the back button or X the tab. Citations of actual research would contribute more to the discussion than unsubstantiated opinion -- IMHO! Here's where 16px (actually, 12pt) came from: http://blogs.msdn.com/fontblog/archive/2005/11/08/490490.aspx Note that it happened many many years ago when average screen DPI was much much lower than it is now. 16px isn't as big as it used to be. http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/bigdefaults.html Note also the empirical evidence that how most web pages style fonts is wrong: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/05 19:28 (GMT+0100) Tony Crockford apparently typed: On 5 Sep 2007, at 15:21, Felix Miata wrote: Who made this a fact? Just because web designers, a group with the following characteristics (creating a bias among them) to distinguish it from an average member of the general public: 1-detail oriented (more comfortable than average with small things) 2-use large computer displays 3-leave their browsers set to the defaults that they believe most people use (untweaked to suit their own personal preferences) 4-young (have not yet reached age of deteriorating eyesight) think it so, doesn't make it so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Proof_by_assertion right back at you. The point of pointing that page was the repetition factor, that people eventually believe as fact anything sufficiently repeated, whether proven true or otherwise. In web development circles, the defaults are too big is a mantra that is not even close to a proven fact in the entire universe of web users and would be web users who don't use the web because they can't easily enough deal with the tiny text on most web pages. I'm 50 with imperfect vision, and still a web designer. (I do have a big screen with unchanged browser settings I'll grant you) Big screen is of no small consequence here. An average designer wouldn't intentionally continue to use a screen that's uncomfortably small. At some point ~6+hrs a day in front of it would force a correction that simply is not compelled among casual web users - either bigger screen, or different job. A lot of the web designers I know are not young and most of them wear glasses. Wearing glasses proves nothing. Some people who haven't even reached their teen years wear glasses. Even with glasses many over 40 have poor vision. How good the net corrected vision is is what matters. Elder simply means greater likelihood that corrected vision is poorer than average, and/or poorer than it used to be. so proof by assertion works both ways. I was not asserting all or exclusive, only average. I'm sure a scientific poll on any general web development/design list would prove that the average of all such characteristics among participants would show they AVERAGE as indicated, NOT that all without exception are that way. FewER people with poor eyesight take jobs demanding detail work in front of computer screens. FewER people than average with full time jobs in front of computer screens. It's a job comfort thing. YoungER people as a group are more comfortable and more familiar with computers and thus more likely to employ them heavily in their occupation than older people. There's already proof in the results - the web is overwhelmed by sites that set fonts smaller than the defaults - and the consequence that normal web users don't like it. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/05 11:42 (GMT-0700) Hassan Schroeder apparently typed: Felix Miata wrote: So my question is: do we *know* that this applies to reading text /on a computer screen/? Not guess, not believe, *know*. Maybe something like this? http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/2S/font.htm And as additional answer to issue of aging boomers: http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/3W/fontSR.htm Neither of which are apparently worth anything, if your contention below about assessing size is true :-) If you accept the assumption I make below, then quite the contrary. To know how big 16px or 24px is requires knowing: 1-screen size 2-screen resolution 3-viewing distance Plus, there are factors besides size that affect reading comfort, such as contrast, leading, and line length. At least, I didn't see any of that addressed on a quick read. Had you written 12pt rather than 16px, one might assume that your system had a properly adjusted DPI and consequently that 12pt really meant 12pt, a physical size, and thus meaningful. Even so, without knowing your viewing distance, we still don't know the apparent size. On my 1280x1024 19 (diagonal) flat panel display, 12pt and 16px are visually the same. The physical size on the screen is ~3.5mm (a bit more than 1/8) and my viewing distance is ~32 inches. A 1280x1024 19 display is ~86.3 DPI. If you are using a browser that floors at or is fixed to use an assumed 96 DPI (standard doz setting BTW), which more often than not is the reality, then 12pt should be rendering at about 17.8px. Some browsers will round 17.8 down to 17 (IE), while others will use 18 (Gecko). It's quite common for that 1px or 2px difference to be unnoticable unless seen in direct comparision, such as on http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/font-arial and http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/font-verdana. But we don't have any of that for the studies you cite, so how much can they really be relied on? Because of their source and apparent nature, it is reasonable to assume that when they wrote 12pt, they meant 12pt as a real size, not as a nominal size. If on the contrary they were actually using nominal sizes, then the truth is that the participants were probably, as was the norm in lowfi screen days of 6-12 years ago, seeing and happy with fonts that were larger in fact than the nominal sizes indicated. Note that it happened many many years ago when average screen DPI was much much lower than it is now. 16px isn't as big as it used to be. Uh-huh. And these studies were (apparently) published seven years ago, and hence likely done on low-res CRTs, for which, again, we have no data. The actual resolutions are unimportant, as long as the assumption that the pt sizes stated meant actual pt size rather than nomimal pt size is made, with the consequence that the validity of the study remains in effect. In the absence of /current/ evidence, I'd say the jury's still out :-) Current studies aren't required prior to demonstration that previous studies are no longer valid. Truth isn't converted by mere age into untruth. We do know that standard LCD displays on store shelves today seem to be targeted to working DPI as little removed as practical from the 96 default standard from M$. To that end, the larger displays have higher resolutions. e.g., 4:3 displays are uncommon in sizes other than 17 (more common, 96.4 DPI) and 19 (less common, 86.3 DPI). Smaller 15 displays are 1024x768 (85.3 DPI). Larger, 20 is 1400x1050 (less common, (87.5 DPI) or 1600x1050 (100.0 DPI). More common now are the widescreens, 19 at the bottom usually using 1440x900 (89.4 DPI) or 1680x1050 (104.3 DPI), bigger 22 using 1680x1050 (90.1 DPI) or 1920x1200 (102.9 DPI), bigger yet 24 1920x1200 (94.3 DPI), or giant 30 2560x1600 (100.6 DPI). In the laptop world, which has been outselling the desktop world for the past several years, manufacturers have taken to adjusting the default DPI upward to 120 before delivery when necessary to avoid reduced sales that result from the laptop (everything is so tiny) syndrome. A 14 @ 1280x800 (107.8 DPI; if 96, pt is undersize; if 120, pt is oversize), 15.4 @ 1280x800 (~98 DPI; quite close if DPI is 96), 16 @ 1440x900 (106.1 DPI), 16 @ 1680x1050 (123.8 DPI), 16 @ 1920x1200 (141.5 DPI), 17 @ 1680x1050 (116.5 DPI), or 17 @ 1920x1200 (133.2 DPI). Compare those to yesteryear's (lowfi) DPI values: screen size 13 14 16 18 800x600 76.971.462.5 1024x76891.480.071.1 The net result is IE's 12pt (16px) nominal default on average used to be a lot bigger than it is now. Nominal 12pt today is on average significantly smaller than the average 16px of 6-12 years ago (when the web developer defaults are too big mantra had its genesis). If those studies were using nominal sizes, then the same tests today would almost certainly be providing the participants physically smaller fonts
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/05 21:06 (GMT+0100) Tony Crockford apparently typed: I don't remember the last time I visited a mainstream site and found the fonts smaller than normal. can you point to some popular sites (I mean mainstream popular sites) where the fonts are (a) non-resizable and (b) too small BBC News seems to be still as described on http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/bbcSS.html (body is still 'font:normal 13px Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, MS sans serif;'). I haven't done any more than a cursory update on http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/shame.html for quite some time but I'm sure some of the sites listed there still set their fonts in px and/or embed major content in Flash designed for 800x600 screens. -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/05 23:17 (GMT+0300) Rimantas Liubertas apparently typed: That was, in part, why I started this thread; I felt (and still feel) that the notion of you MUST design for 100% of your users' default text size because that is their preferred text size was becoming a mantra. And that is only an assumption. Default font size was chosen by browser vendors, not users. Not many know they can change it. Even less who know do it. 1-How many is not many? 2-How many more would it take to be enough? 3-How many actually need to, regardless whether they know they can, or how to? 4-Why do you assume they have reason to? Maybe thinking in terms of an opposite proposition would be instructive. 1-I'd like to see (and expect never to find) a scientific study that shows either: a-complaints about web page text size being too big outnumber those about it being too small by normal average web users (not by web designers) b-author sizing to something less than 100% for primary content is preferred by normal average web users (not by web designers) c-most average web users (not web designers) find the defaults significantly different from ideal and would change them if they knew how 2-If vendors were getting significant numbers of complaints from genuine ordinary average web users, there is likelihood they would have changed them somewhere along the developmental way. Now with a GUI web over a decade old they are essentially unchanged in *nominal* size. During that same time, the *physical* size of those same nominally sized defaults has been shrinking significantly. 3-Fonts smaller than ideal have a different functional impact than fonts larger than ideal. Too big far less often equates to unusable and/or painful than does the converse. When I arrive on a site with too big fonts (as often happens to me due to styling as described on http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Clagnut/eonsSS ) I usually don't find enough discomfort to bother with resizing smaller, while when I arrive on the more usual site with too small fonts, I usually do one of three things: 1-close the tab; 2-hit back button; 3-zoom text larger. 4-Not all web users are morons to whom the implicit meaning of Personal Computer (PC) is lost. Personal means under and subject to the control and personalization of the computers they own and/or use. That most don't go beyond setting of desktop wallpaper and screensaver in personalizing is no reason to assume that any change you make that affects what they see is likely to be better for them than if you didn't. That you like smaller fonts than the defaults is no reason to assume they do too. I don't believe a web nearly 3 years beyond Firefox 1.0 and Safari 1.0 is still so overwhelmed with users who are so totally unclued that they can personalize their personal computer's web browsers that those who are clued can be still be disregarded as insufficient justification to respect anyone's preferences, whether actively or passively determined. -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/05 14:40 (GMT-0700) Hassan Schroeder apparently typed: Felix Miata wrote: If you accept the assumption I make below, then quite the contrary. I'm not interested in accepting your assumptions -- I'm looking for valid evidence; that's the whole point. There are only two possible presumptions regarding the indicated pt sizes that can be made from their study. Either the pt sizes specified were meant literally, in which case the data and results remain perfectly valid today, or they were meant nominally. If they were meant nominally, because the actual average DPI of that time was inaccurately set to in excess of reality, the results indicate people preferred fonts that were in fact larger than the pt sizes that were indicated in the study's results. IOW, with the arguably easier to make assumption, those test subjects actually preferred larger than 12pt. A 1280x1024 19 display is ~86.3 DPI. If you are using a browser that floors at or is fixed to use an assumed 96 DPI (standard doz setting BTW), which more often than not is the reality, then 12pt should be rendering at about 17.8px. I wasn't clear, and I got the math backwards. With the default floor in effect, nominal 12pt will render at 16px, as it always will when a browser is functioning as if display DPI was in fact 96. However, 12pt is merely nominal when actual display DPI is less than the 96 DPI that Firefox assumes, not an accurate 12pt as when 12pt is printed. 86/96 times 16 is 14.333, which rounded by FF will render at 14px when both 12pt is called for and it is permitted to use the actual display DPI of 86. Using FF2 on my SuSE 10 desktop, 12pt and 16px Arial upper case M characters render at *exactly* the same height. Measured, not just theorized. Indeed. You are running a sub-96 DPI display. Without changing the hidden Firefox pref layout.css.dpi from -1 to 0, and assuming a reasonably but not necessarily accurately configured X, Firefox on your system assumes 96 DPI, which makes 12pt nominal exactly equal to 16px, which makes the actual size of nominal 12pt larger than 1/6, the actual height of a printed 12pt character box. If you visit with Firefox http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/font-arial with 1280x1024 on 19 you'll see a match between 12pt and 16px. However, if you permit Firefox to use an accurate DPI for your display by setting layout.css.dpi to 86 (or possibly by setting it to 0, depending on your X configuration), then you'd see something like http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Fnt/font-arial-L086DPI.gif (12pt smaller than 16px; ~14px; SUSE 10.2). If your SUSE was running on a 16 1680x1050 laptop, and X was configured to use an accurate DPI, then you'd see something like http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Fnt/font-arial-L124DPI.gif (12pt much larger than 16px; ~20px; SUSE 10.2). But we don't have any of that for the studies you cite, so how much can they really be relied on? Because of their source and apparent nature, it is reasonable to assume No it's not. It's only reasonable to assume if you want to try to twist the evidence to your way of thinking. One minute you say you need a whole laundry list of data points to analyze how big a particular font size is, and the next minute you say we can assume that a particular study (the conclusion of which favors your argument) is perfectly valid without all that. The laundry list was about conveying apparent physical size in a discussion about size. A pixel has no physical size meaning without a context that can translate it into a physical size. At the very least, doing that requires knowledge of both screen size and resolution, or the combination of the two that is normally presented as DPI. If we make the easy presumption that the scientific study was flawed by presenting nominal pt rather than real pt, then the results it presents understates the participants' size preference. If we make the perfectly plausible other presumption, that pt means real pt, then there's nothing yet shown in this thread to invalidate the study results. -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/05 22:49 (GMT+0100) Tony Crockford apparently typed: On 5 Sep 2007, at 22:04, Felix Miata wrote: BBC News seems to be still as described on http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ SS/bbcSS.html (body is still 'font:normal 13px Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, MS sans serif;'). Which brings me back to the question: Who says it's too small? which you don't seem to be able to answer in an objective way. I think I have, but here goes another way: 1-I've provided links to places indicating normal ordinary people complaining about too small web page text 2-I've noted apparent absence of places, outside a web developer/designer context, with people complaining about too large web page text 3-I've indicated in other threads direct contact with people indicating as in 1 above 4-I've indicated in other threads virtual absence of contact with people indicating as in 2 above 5-I've provided links to scientific studies that show what size normal ordinary web users prefer 6-I've indicated, and been agreed with, that only a user is in position to determine best/right/ideal size, and that presumptively, whether actively or passively, users have made such a determination; from which it follows that content smaller than 100% must necessarily be smaller than the user's choice - aka too small 7-I've provided links to sites of entities that are in some way qualified as having usability and/or accessibility expertise recommending user defaults be respected with 100% of user defaults based design 8-I've a web site loaded with comments on web font issues Without funds to sponsor a qualified and independent testing institution doing more objective study, I'm not sure what else anyone could do. I'm suggesting that normal users don't find the BBC site too small, or they would have complained and the BBC, being responsible and interested, would have done something about it. In an ideal world big business might actually act on non-paying customer complaints, or non-paying customers might actually bother to complain enough to get noticed. Then again, the BBC is apparently pretty big. http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/ use considerably different CSS. -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/06 00:21 (GMT+0100) Rick Lecoat apparently typed: But the fact remains that they have never adjusted their defaults. It also remains undetermined how many would if they both knew they could and knew how to do it. That you like smaller fonts than the defaults is no reason to assume they do too. Correct. Nor is it a reason to assume that they do not. I believe I've already explained up thread that they do, in _web_designers_as_a_group_ having a personal skew/bias/preference in favor of things small generally, part of the nature of the kind of detail-oriented people who gravitate into web design. -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up
On 2007/09/05 22:00 (GMT+0100) Rick Lecoat apparently typed: (Felix argues that the browser vendors arrived at their default size after long and careful research, but AFAIK said research remains hearsay). Bits of it are scattered about on the web, including Mozilla's bugzilla. A scour of http://blogs.msdn.com/fontblog/ might turn up something somewhat comprehensive. Earlier I provided a component of it: http://blogs.msdn.com/fontblog/archive/2005/11/08/490490.aspx To restate my earlier point (hopefully with greater clarity): No matter what you do, people will look at a page and (probably) either say the type is too big or the type is too small. There's another possibility: it's just fine. In either case they can adjust it accordingly, except that those who want to make it smaller (eg. those without accessibility issues) are *perhaps* less likely to know how to. And *perhaps* that's one argument for designing with smaller type as a baseline. Other food for thought: http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/essence.html http://www.dev-archive.net/articles/font-analogy.html http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/boomers/ http://www.cameratim.com/personal/soapbox/morons-in-webspace -- It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] setting fontsize in body
On 2007/08/07 20:38 (GMT+0100) Alastair Campbell apparently typed: You could take Jacob Neilsons finding that small fonts were the most popular 'mistake' as proof that people don't know how to change their settings Or you could take it as proof that web designers as a group have perfect vision, and fail to understand normal web users as a group do not have perfect vision, resulting in fonts on web pages just right for most web designers and too small for most others. We are caught in something of a catch-22, as so many sites use small fonts compared to the default, or simply reducing the default because so many people don't know how to change it. Nielsen isn't the only one who has observed that designers impose text sizes smaller than the rest of the world prefers or requires. Note the first data point on Fixing The Web: Millions of people cannot participate fully online because most Web sites are built for people with perfect vision and the manual dexterity needed to operate a mouse. http://xhtml.com/en/future/fixing-the-web-1/ -- It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.George Washington Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] setting fontsize in body
On 2007/08/07 12:54 (GMT+0100) Rick Lecoat apparently typed: I just wondered how accurate the idea that 'type that is smaller than the user's specified browser default is too small to for that user to read' really is? Because we don't know that they /did/ specify it. The browser vendor probably specified it. I've been unable to find any scientific study anywhere that's reports anything other than that more users prefer 12pt than any other size... At the same time, however, I also accede to David Dorward's point that browsers go through much usability testing before release. Of course, if we are to trust that usability testing to provide an accurate gauge of what the majority of people consider a comfortable reading size, then the fact that different browsers specify different default sizes slightly undermines that. Actually there is no material difference in nominal browser default sizes. http://lists.css-discuss.org/mailman/private/css-d/2006-January/057975.html Given that most browsers in most environments nominally default to 12pt, and that more people prefer 12pt than any other size, any proposition that a site should be styled such that most text is not the user's default size is unsupportable. -- It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.George Washington Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] setting fontsize in body
On 2007/08/07 04:28 (GMT-0700) Tee G. Peng apparently typed: On Aug 7, 2007, at 4:01 AM, David Dorward wrote: I've never seen a designer make body text bigger then the vendor default, only smaller and harder to read. clearleft dot com comes to mind. That's a Clagnut-styled page. In a roundabout way, http://clearleft.com/ is a 100% of default-styled page, but if you have a minimum font size set and use a Gecko browser, its text will be bigger for any minimum size more than 9/16 of your default. How much bigger will depend on the spread between default size and minimum size. http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Clagnut/eonsSS.html -- It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.George Washington Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] setting fontsize in body
On 2007/08/07 07:28 (GMT-0700) Hassan Schroeder apparently typed: Claiming that the average user has configured any browser to her/his personal taste is simply wishful thinking. For any designer to think he can do better than the web browser makers who made the default defaults equal to what ordinary users prefer, and virtually all the same as each other, is ludicrous. The minority of users who find the default defaults excessively different from what they find acceptable should be able to discover a solution, while the majority have been given approximately or even exactly what they prefer. Thus, assuming users have actively configured their own browsers to suit their own needs is immensely less evil than the rude imposition of a designer's arbitrary fraction of their defaults. -- It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.George Washington Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] setting fontsize in body
On 2007/08/08 10:04 (GMT+1200) Matthew Cruickshank apparently typed: Rob Kirton wrote: I contacted the Firefox development team prior to release 2 and suggested exactly what you have suggested, i.e. give the users an obvious prompt to re-size text i.e. in the default browser menu. It saves on both the users having to discover and remeber specialist key strokes and also save the web developer having to supply for each page. I was informed that they had a far better idea in the pipeline. I'm not holding my breath... Perhaps they were hinting at the full page zoom. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4821 is full page zoom, getting heavy attention in hopes it will be part of Gecko 1.9. More likely it was this 7 year old enhancement request: feature to zoom so that majority of text on a page is user's default size https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31961 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108391 was since fixed, might have been part of what was referred to. There are a lot of really old enhancement request bugs open that would make Gecko friendlier, among them: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24846 7.5 years https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45848 7 years https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217523 4 years https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259856 3 years https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86194 tracks various user power enhancements. -- It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.George Washington Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] setting fontsize in body
On 2007/08/04 17:59 (GMT+0100) Nick Fitzsimons apparently typed: On 4 Aug 2007, at 17:08:37, Gunlaug Sørtun wrote: Just to check since there may also be another, so far pretty undocumented, variable at play here: - does anyone know if this 'minimum font size' value changes/differs with screen-DPI in Opera? It is a bit problematic if a browser has undocumented defaults/behaviors, as we cannot test based on knowledge then and the guessing game is no fun. On the other hand: such deviations shouldn't create any real problems if the methods we use take the potential variables into account, and browser-options aren't bugs designers should try to counter. On the standard 96dpi XP Pro, Opera has configured itself with: default font size 16px minimum font size 9px. Another Parallels virtual machine later: XP Pro SP2, never been used except for first boot, set to 120dpi, reboot to apply settings, install Opera 9.22. Result: default font size 20px - AHAH! An obvious attempt to match IE, which though still 12pt, at 120 DPI is 20px rather than 96 DPI's 16px. minimum font size 9px. DPI has virtually no effect on Opera under the Linux sample environments I tried with initially void ~/.opera directories: Opera 9.22 SUSE Linux Opera Opera Opera Opera Opera Firefox Desktop KDE KDE KDE KDE KDE 2.0.0.5 horizontal 1024 1280 1400 1600 1600all vertical 768 960 1050 1200 1200all DPI 8496 108 120 120all XFT.dpi - - - - 144all Type FontSize Size Size Size Size Size email compose Courier New1212121212 email display Courier New1313131313 browser menus Arial 1212141515 CSS Menu browser toolbars Arial 1212141515 CSS Menu browser dialogsArial 1212141515 CSS Menu browser panels Arial 1212141515 CSS Menu web page normal text Times New Roman1616161616 16 web page PRE Courier New1616161616 text field multi line Courier New1212121212 text field single line Arial 1212121212 form buttons Arial 1212121212 font family serif Times New Roman - - - - - font family sans-serif Arial - - - - - font family cursiveImpact- - - - - font family fantasyComic Sans MS - - - - - font family monospace Courier New - - - - -12 web page H1 Times New Roman3232323232 web page H2 Times New Roman2424242424 web page H3 Times New Roman1818181818 web page H4 Times New Roman1616161616 web page H5 Times New Roman1313131313 web page H5 Times New Roman1212121212 minimum 9px 9px 9px 9px 9pxnone -- It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.George Washington Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] setting fontsize in body
On 2007/08/03 21:14 (GMT+0100) Patrick H. Lauke apparently typed:
Nick Fitzsimons wrote:
On 3 Aug 2007, at 16:08:55, Rick Lecoat wrote:
When dealing with this the other year, I came up with this solution
requiring an additional div, which happened to be there anyway:
body {
font-size: 125%; /* bump it up to 20px, assuming browser starts at
16px */
}
div#wrapper {
font-size: 50%; /* and back down to 10px */
}
You could also save yourself the wrapper by doing the first declaration
on the html element, and the second on the body
html { font-size: 125%; }
body { font-size: 50%; }
(Still falls foul of a minimum font-size set in the browser preferences,
though.)
I wouldn't say it falls foul. If a user has set a minimum size, then a
page should heed that. It still *respects* minimum font-size settings.
http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Clagnut/eonsSS.html demonstrates the meaning of
falls foul in such cases.
The same also applies when a user has applied a rudimentary user stylesheet
(containing only 'body {font-size: medium !important}' or equivalent). A
slightly more elaborate one adding e.g. td, dd, p, div, li, pre, code,
textarea to body generally falls foul also, as so many authors apply their
CSS to classes and ids instead of simply elements.
--
It is impossible to rightly govern the world without
God and the Bible.George Washington
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/
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Re: [WSG] setting fontsize in body
On 2007/08/03 16:16 (GMT-0400) Rick Lecoat apparently typed: So, in calculating your 'readable' text size as a proportion of the (admittedly overlarge) default size, you make yourself vulnerable should the user have already made their own compensation for the overly large default size. The time when is was reasonable to assume the default was either 16px or admittedly overlarge is long since past. While the former still might in fact be the case the majority of the time, in the face of growing screen resolutions and DPI the minority of the time is large and rapidly growing, with many instances the DPI high enough that the PC supplier (for laptops usually, and indirectly) changes the default to 20px (actually still 12pt, the real default in most cases) by changing the system DPI from the normal 96 to a necessarily larger 120. The only way to know a size is too large is if you are looking at it. You know neither how many px your visitors have available (without JS), nor how big each is (with or without JS). You don't have your users' eyes, nor their seating distance, nor their hardware, nor their lighting conditions, nor their personal software settings, except by small chance. Something you probably do have is no less than average eyesight, which biases you into thinking smaller is OK. So, there's just no way you can know too large or too small or anything in between for any typical site's users. The only reasonable current assumption is that the users' defaults are exactly as they want and/or need them to be. Assuming otherwise with anything other than medium, 1em or 100% in body flowing through to main content unaltered could somehow be any improvement is thus an inexcusably rude imposition. http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/bigdefaults.html The more I look at the clagnut solution, the more I come to the conclusion that relying on the user having their browser's default text size unchanged is simply building a house on sand. Sooner or later it's coming down around your ears. Absolutely. -- It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.George Washington Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] To target or not
On 2007/07/20 20:14 (GMT+1000) Steve Olive apparently typed: There are valid cases for opening content from the same site in a new window. The most obvious is when logging into secure sections of web sites, like online banking. By forcing a new window that then generates the secure session and closing the window at the end of the session you prevent people from using the back button to re-access the secure content. The new window should also have all elements other than a scrollbar hidden so the window can't easily be used to continue surfing the Internet. IMHO this should become a web convention in the way the Internet has been commercialised. All online transactions should be conducted in their own window that is killed once the transaction is complete. If my bank did as you describe I'd switch banks. It's my computer. I get to decide when opening another window is appropriate. It's up to the page design to prevent me from wrongly accessing its content, which it can easily enough do without forcing any new windows. -- All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteoousness. 2 Timothy 3:16 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Re: please avoid forcing people to open pdf in browser!
On 2007/07/19 11:23 (GMT+1000) Webb, KerryA apparently typed: Jermayn wrote: I work at one of the those government places that has those horrible pdfs scattered through out all their horrible pages. I couldnt agree more. And I work with people who build such sites, and I don't have a problem with PDFs per se. As a rule, I do. Most are apparently made by and for the people who design inaccessible mousetype web sites, not for normal or low vision web users. If that's an efficient and effective way to publish a document, let them Efficient and effective only from a publisher's perspective, not from a user's perspective. Pdfs are for printing. Ecologically aware people are not interested in killing trees just to get a little freely available information. do it - providing the PDF is properly marked up. It's rare that pdfs are published to be univerally accessible, so the end result is that as a group, pdfs are a scourge. Nielsen is too polite about it: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html -- All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteoousness. 2 Timothy 3:16 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Font-size 62.5% problem
On 2007/07/01 23:40 (GMT+0100) Paul Collins apparently typed:
I seem to be having trouble assigning the font-size:62.5%
Please note that if and when you do get it fixed to your liking, it
won't be to the liking of normal web users[1], particularly those who
employ a Gecko minimum font size, or user styles that override 'body
{font-size: 62.5%}'[2].
[1]
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/100e2r?v=4
http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/top-10/
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/fontsize.html
http://www.cameratim.com/personal/soapbox/morons-in-webspace
[2]
http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Clagnut/eonsSS.html
--
All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching,
rebuking, correcting, and training in righteoousness.
2 Timothy 3:16 NIV
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/
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Re: [WSG] intuitive text resizer for accessibility toolbar
On 2007/06/21 00:12 (GMT-0400) Benedict Wyss apparently typed: I just searched on google and found a couple that left me feeling rather mentally limp, so your my next port of call. please pass back links to a text resizer that has the following ability: I think what you want is to reinvent the wheel and clutter your page duplicating browser tools. One job of a modern web browser to provide its user with whatever text size adjustment is required to make a page comfortable and/or usable. They all provide by default a size determined by scientific tests to be a size that works well for the broadest range of users, along with at least one tool to tailor it to personal whim. Presumably each user has either already done so or found doing so unnecessary. All you need to do is accommodate them all by leaving the base size as you found it and setting only contextual sizes relative to the base size presumptively chosen by each individual user. http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/ http://www.informationarchitects.jp/100e2r?v=4 -- Respect everyone. I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Safari now on Windows
On 2007/06/12 12:21 (GMT+1000) Michael MD apparently typed: http://www.apple.com/safari/ Speaking of Mac browsers - a friend called me on the weekend and said he can't find anything newer than IE5 for OS9 but won't upgrade to OSX because it would be way too slow on his G3. (and he doesn't have the money to buy a new machine) now that is something to think about! If all you use it for is running Safari or IE5 or Camino, a G3 is way more than plenty fast enough to run OS X. I have one, and it doesn't seem at all slow with 4 browsers open at once compared to W2K at 50% higher MHz. Just make sure it has plenty RAM, at least double a measly 128M. -- Respect everyone. I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Safari now on Windows
On 2007/06/12 14:40 (GMT+1000) Nick Gleitzman apparently typed: Felix Miata wrote: If all you use it for is running Safari or IE5 or Camino, a G3 is way more than plenty fast enough to run OS X. Yes, but Michael didn't say his friend was 'just' looking to use a browser. I got the impression he's still using his G3 for all his computing needs. My point was that a 20th century G3 is perfectly adequate for a web developer on a limited hardware budget to use for Mac testing his web design work. Puters with GHz+ processor speeds simply aren't necessary to use web browsers and their plugins. -- Respect everyone. I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] layout/font site test - please
On 2007/06/04 10:06 (GMT-0700) Paul Novitski apparently typed: Felix Miata wrote: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/ On 2007/06/04 01:41 (GMT-0700) Paul Novitski apparently typed: In Firefox 2, when the window width becomes too narrow and/or the text size becomes too large to allow the headline The Dancer's Product Resource to fit on one line, the headline wraps around with such a high line-length that the new line overlaps the content below the header. Sorry, I don't see the problem. Why not simply allow the header block to naturally expand vertically when the headline wraps? I've replaced line-height with padding to vertically center H1, so the problem of expanding outside of #header on when wrap occurs is gone. -- Respect everyone. I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] layout/font site test - please
On 2007/06/04 12:33 (GMT-0400) Philip Kiff apparently typed: Felix Miata wrote: On 2007/06/02 11:06 (GMT+0100) Designer apparently typed: Sparked partly by the recent discussions on elasticity, I've been attempting to put together a 'template', based on em's and with a max-width. [] You can see it at: http://www.marscovista.fsnet.co.uk/newtemplate/template.html I only looked in IE7 FF. Pretty good, although the line lengths are on the long side of what I like, and the text is too small. http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/dancesrqb.html is the same basic layout, but without breaking IE's font resizer, with no special treatment for antique browsers, and without disrespecting the visitor's choice of font size. Just FYI, on my default browser settings, ... the font sizes used on Designer's site provide better readability than those on the DancesSRQ site. This is a rather curious statement considering that exclusive of the H1 text on Bob's site the largest text there is 75% (12px for most users of default settings), while on my site 90%+ of the text is 100% of the default (16px for most users of default settings) and only about 100 characters of fine print on mine is smaller than his smallest (see more below). In particular, the subheading tag line on the DancesSRQ is just a wee bit too small for my tastes -- my browser computes it as 10px. The one line #element7B p text was set to x-small, which was a mistake I corrected after posting. That line was an attempt to match the original site, which used text in an image. I substituted real text with CSS styling, but neglected to notice that my matching was done using my normal readable 20px default and I hadn't compensated for it, resulting in a smaller size than intended. At a 20px default, x-small is 15px, 75% of the default. If x-small was 75% at a 16px default, it would be 12px, not 10px (about which, see more below). The same size font is displayed in the bottom copyright statement. By contrast, the smallest size that appears on Designer's site shows up as 12px. No doubt it is a matter of taste and personal preference, but I would be cautious in promoting the current DancesSRQ design over the one used by Designer as far as font sizes are concerned. Only the one line #footer and 6 words of (bold, and precisely matching the original design) .specimen remain at 10px. I don't see how such a little bit of borderline readable (fine print) contextually styled text could compensate for the other 96% of the content's 100% or larger text, leaving Bob's with better readability for its mostly 75% or smaller content. As to x-small being 10px, I believe that even though it is exactly that in most web browsers by default, I also believe that it shouldn't be - so much so that I tried to do something about it several years ago by getting Gecko to make x-small 12px. See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=187256 . That possibly could still happen, but I'm guessing it won't. All that said, the way I judge the readability of any page is by the size of the bulk of its content and main navigation, not by a couple of minimal importance non-primary-content lines it contains. By that standard, Bob's is a substantial distance from comfortable to read, barely above fine print (pain) threshold in the absence of applied zoom or minimum font size. -- Respect everyone. I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] layout/font site test - please
On 2007/06/06 19:45 (GMT+0100) Designer apparently typed: Felix Miata wrote: All that said, the way I judge the readability of any page is by the size of the bulk of its content and main navigation, not by a couple of minimal importance non-primary-content lines it contains. By that standard, Bob's is a substantial distance from comfortable to read, barely above fine print (pain) threshold in the absence of applied zoom or minimum font size. Interestingly, I notice that the text I produced on this 'template' (barely above fine print (pain) threshold) site is just marginally bigger than the default menu bars on FF2, IE7, Opera . . . Just an observation :-) Probably pretty close to exactly like this (standard XP 8pt/11.67px Tahoma menu text): http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/bobs2col096W.png Note that on KDE on Linux the default menu text is bigger (10pt/13.33px vs. your template's 75%/14px): http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/bobs2col096L.gif On Mac the menu text is apparently both bigger still, and more legible than your page text, since its contrast is much higher than your #333 on #F1F1F1, while the same apparent size (but not the x-height gigantic Verdana): http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/bobs2col096M.jpg All the way back at least into W95, doz has defaulted to what M$ for many years called small text for its UI. With XP in 2001 it renamed it from small to normal. Your interesting observation I haven't seen mentioned very often in any web development forums, but I did address it quite some time back: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/defaultsize.html#note1 . The summary of that paragraph is that normal web page content text has no business being anywhere near as small as browser UI text. -- Respect everyone. I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Recommended screen size
On 2007/06/01 13:09 (GMT-0400) Andrew Maben apparently typed: On Jun 1, 2007, at 12:07 PM, Felix Miata wrote: Or, quit thinking like a print designer. Embrace the variability that is a browser viewport. Size relatively, which can work for 200x400 and all the way up as high as high gets. With respect, I think this is a rather over simplistic response, at least if I'm correctly interpreting your intent. You seem to be suggesting that a design or layout should be conceived as a rectangle with arbitrary relative dimensions, and that those Arbitrary may or may not be the right word to describe a somewhat narrow range of proportion between default text size and viewport size that reflects my intent. Such a range would have a line length ideal of 10-11 words [1] fit in roughly 50%-70% of the viewport width as the range center point. dimensions should be preserved at all resolutions through relative sizing? Sorry, but that sounds like print thinking to me, and in that case how small is the text going to be at 200x400 if it's presentable at 800x600? Presumably the default text size at 200x400 will be a bunch smaller than 800x600 in keeping with the physically smaller display, but 200x400 is really an extreme example that needs a handheld media type stylesheet. 480x360 or thereabouts might be a more realistic floor for screen media, but at a minimum 800x600 all the way up should work as long as the default font size and viewport size stay within a reasonably common proportional relationship range. If I'm missing your point, I'd love to see some clarifying examples. Maybe we should just start by analyzing and discussing a very simplistic example: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/indexx.html (http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ without the automatic redirect) Using Safari, Konq, FF, SM and/or Camino zoom, or IE's text sizer, zoom it up a whole bunch of steps, and down a whole bunch of steps. Constrain only by keeping the text size to viewport width ratio within a reasonable working range. So large a font that only 4 words could fit across the viewport, and so small that line lengths could become 40 words or more, would clearly be outside that range. Somewhat less simplistic examples: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/ http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/dancesrqb.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/dlviolin.html [1] on line lengths of 10-11 words: http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/text.htm http://webstyleguide.com/type/lines.html http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/em/ -- Respect everyone. I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] layout/font site test - please
On 2007/06/04 01:41 (GMT-0700) Paul Novitski apparently typed: At 6/3/2007 08:36 PM, Felix Miata wrote: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/dancesrqb.html is the same basic layout, but without breaking IE's font resizer, with no special treatment for antique browsers, and without disrespecting the visitor's choice of font size. In Firefox 2, when the window width becomes too narrow and/or the text size becomes too large to allow the headline The Dancer's Product Resource to fit on one line, the headline wraps around with such a high line-length that the new line overlaps the content below the header. I knew that, but didn't get around to deciding what, beyond the title text I added, if anything, to do about it before the hour got any later last night, and I wanted to resurrect the thread before another night slipped by. I also noticed that in IE7 the part seen as overlap in FF simply disappears. Note that by the time that happens that the line length to viewport width relationship is pretty well deteriorated. That is, #primarycontent text is down to about 6 words per line, and less than about 40% or so of the viewport width. When that size is reached it is more than double the *size* most web designers think is appropriate for web page content. IOW, from the ~12px size most designers seem to think is appropriate for a 800x600 resolution full screen window, it takes about an 18px default (or text zoom equivalent) for it to not fit. 18px is actually ~9pxX18px for a 162px character box, while 12px is actually ~6pxX12px for a 72px character box, making 18px 225% of the size of 12px. Proportionally the impact is the same as the actual default size and viewport size are increased. Overlapping text is a definite no-no, so I've set the overflow to hidden in the current version. That makes FF seem to behave like IE. The question remains what, if anything, to do about that missing H1 content. One option is to simply dismiss it as a problem of inadequate consequence. As grounds to support this option: 1-Its title text contains the missing portion. 2-It's really only a subtitle to the real title contained in the graphic. 3-The dearth of people who actually need such giant text in proportion to the viewport width would likely be satisfied that the meat of the page is fully accessible. Another option would be to use JS to remove the graphic, reduce H1 font-size, and/or remove the added H1 letter-spacing when some chosen ratio of font-size to viewport width is found to be exceeded. The option I prefer is in the alternate stylesheet reachable from the view menu of the browsers that offer direct alternate stylesheet support - dispensing with the viewport width constraint entirely. I suspect most who choose truly giant text have little or no problem with horizontal scroll as long as the scroll isn't necessary to easily use the primary content. My original fluid revision of the original author's Homestead Sitebuilder original http://dancesrq.homestead.com/ is at: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/dancesrq.html Last night's version without alternate stylesheet remains temporarily at: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/dancesrqb.html Current version: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/ -- Respect everyone. I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Recommended screen size
On 2007/06/04 20:09 (GMT+0200) [EMAIL PROTECTED] apparently typed: 03 Jun 2007 23:36:40 -0400 Felix Miata wrote (in an entirely separate thread): I only looked in IE7 FF. Pretty good, although the line lengths are on the long side of what I like, and the text is too small. I agree with Philip. Which is what? Nothing written by anyone named Philip was contained in anything you quoted. Nothing written by anyone named Philip was contained anywhere in this thread that I can find. I searched: http://webstandardsgroup.org/manage/archive.cfm?subject=1searchstring=Recommended+screen+size and http://webstandardsgroup.org/manage/archive.cfm?name=1searchstring=philip -- Respect everyone. I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] layout/font site test - please
On 2007/06/02 11:06 (GMT+0100) Designer apparently typed: Sparked partly by the recent discussions on elasticity, I've been attempting to put together a 'template', based on em's and with a max-width. I've used an expression for max-width in IE 7 (pinched from Georg!). I've tested it in FF1.5, IE6 IE7, Opera 9, and Netscape 4.02. To accommodate the latter I've used a simple table instead of floating, but ignore this please - my main concern at this point is that the basics work without falling apart in other browsers. If you have time to do a check and comment I'd be really grateful. The links are dummies, apart from 'projects'. You can see it at: http://www.marscovista.fsnet.co.uk/newtemplate/template.html I only looked in IE7 FF. Pretty good, although the line lengths are on the long side of what I like, and the text is too small. http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Sites/ksc/dancesrqb.html is the same basic layout, but without breaking IE's font resizer, with no special treatment for antique browsers, and without disrespecting the visitor's choice of font size. -- Respect everyone. I Peter 2:17 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Recommended screen size
On 2007/06/01 11:01 (GMT-0400) Andrew Maben apparently typed: On Jun 1, 2007, at 12:08 AM, Lea de Groot wrote: On Thu, 31 May 2007 22:31:28 -0500, Tim Offenstein wrote: Anyone have a recommendation on what size screen to use as a baseline when designing for a new site? 800x600 or 1024x768 or something else? I do base designs for 1024, but I make sure the final implementation doesn't actually break at 800x, although I ignore it being a little crowded (I usually also check 600x, but I only fix really bad breakage) That sounds right: design for 1024, accommodate 800 and try to tolerate 640 Or, quit thinking like a print designer. Embrace the variability that is a browser viewport. Size relatively, which can work for 200x400 and all the way up as high as high gets. -- The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. Proverbs 4:18 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Mac / Linux Check if you please - michaels
On 2007/05/30 02:12 (GMT-0500) Joseph R. B. Taylor apparently typed: Can I ask the Linux users to take a look at this one? I want to make sure there's no layout flaws on your favorite browsers. http://michaels.sitesbyjoe.com/ When I first arrived I was impressed, but hanging around and comparing Mac (Safari 1.3 1280x960), Linux (FF Konq 1600x1200) OS/2 (FF 1400x1050) resulted in some puzzlement. #1 - I would find some other place than directly over a contact us tab to put a full name, address, phone and email. #2 - Newsletter, for a dry cleaning business? Does Michaels really plan to do that? #3 - With the fixed overall width, as resolution goes up, the relative size of the H1 text compared to the adjacent image goes up. On the Mac, the H1 and following P take up nearly the same vertical space as the image's apparent height, which looks very nice, with the H1 finishing nearly 60% down from the top of the image. On Linux, the H1 is almost a full line taller than the image, and the P below is about 4.5 words per line, while on each side of #welcome_message is whitespace equal in width to the narrow paragraph, plus about as much below the image. This would be worse on a widescreen 1920x1200 display if the browser was at or near fullscreen. #4 - The P text on Mac and OS/2 looks to be about the same size as the text in #nav. For some reason I was unable to determine without spending time I'm unwilling to spend, the P text is at least 50% bigger than the #nav text. It's possible this might explain: http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/font-helvetica.html#bitmap . You might want to consider including Liberation and/or DejaVu among your font selections. http://www.press.redhat.com/2007/05/09/liberation-fonts/ http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page #5 - I don't like the brightness of the H1 red shade for its context. I'd probably either try to match the red in the van's sign, or pick a totally different color, likely #295288 or thereabouts. -- The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. Proverbs 4:18 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
