Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up

2007-09-06 Thread Timothy Swan

On Sep 6, 2007, at 11:43 AM, Felix Miata wrote:

How do you know those sites aren't getting back button treatment,  
or unanswered complaints?


I work on a site that gets over a million page views per month. We  
set our base font size, using percentages, to be approximately 13  
pixels. We had "exactly" 3 complaints last year, two of them from  
people who had IE text display set to "Smaller." Yes, there may have  
been more people that would have liked it to be larger, but unless we  
hear from them I wouldn't know that.



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.


If the text containers are elastic and resize as the text is resized,  
this shouldn't be a major problem.


You're arguing that people should use the browser defaults as the  
base; I'm arguing that long ago it was determined by *most* website  
designers that 16 pixels was too large (I'm *not* arguing whether  
that was the correct decision.) If you use 100% today, and people  
have already adjusted their browsers for adequate display (yes,  
usually adjusting the size up) your page will have freakishly large  
type.


I *wish* there was a better standard, but there simply isn't, except  
in wishful thinking.


Tim

--
Timothy Swan
Designer/Webmaster support
InforME




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Re: [WSG] Font sizing: top down or bottom up

2007-09-06 Thread Timothy Swan

On Sep 5, 2007, at 10:09 PM, Dean Edridge wrote:

By giving users: body{font-size:100%;} you are doing the best you  
can at your end, and It's up to them to ensure they have correctly  
configured their browser to suit their eyesight or preferences.


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  set to give an equivalent of 12-13 pixels.)  
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.


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."


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.


Tim Swan

--
Timothy Swan
Designer/Webmaster support
InforME




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