On 6 Mar 99, Jack Killpatrick wrote:
> I think, but am not positive, that the "large font" setting, which is
> system wide in Windows, is a user choice and is generally not a default
> during setup. However, some users, when answering setup questions, may
> choose the "use large fonts" setting without knowing the ramifications.
> I'm also pretty sure that the large font setting effects all Windows
> elements, such as menu items, title bars, dialog boxes, etc and that the
> user will see lots of other screwy things going on during regular system
> use, not just on their browsers.
The default setting is "small font", yes, and a user will not
normally ever be prompted to select an alternative unless he
specifically wants to change the font size after the fact.
It is not really system-wide. It especially affects the system font,
which dictates the appearance of items that are meant to be merely
displayed, not printed: icon labels, menus, dialog boxes, and so on.
It will not normally change how text displays in applications such as
word-processors, for instance, in which you generally specify a point
size for a specific font, rather than a relative "bigger" or
"smaller".
However, text in Web browsers will be affected. This makes sense,
given that the Web is supposed to be a cross-platform, screen-based
medium that is not governed by concepts like specific fonts and point
sizes, or "page dimensions". So if a user has specifically decided
that he wants the text that appears on his screen to be larger, I
think it's perfectly reasonable that browser authors would apply this
choice to Web pages as well. After all, pages are not designed to be
printed in any particular format; they are designed to be *read
onscreen* in whatever format is most convenenient for the user.
Judging by the general tone of this thread, a lot of us seem to have
fallen into the trap of thinking that there is a "correct" or
"optimal" set of parameters at which Web browsers are "supposed" to
display pages; and implicitly, that users who sabotage our attempts
to design pages accordingly, by choosing their own settings, are
either clueless or deliberately making our lives difficult.
This is obviously not so. The fact that a majority of users have
Windows running Netscape -- and thus see default body text displayed
as 12-point Times -- is (or should be) irrelevant to any page
designer. It's just an artefact of the current state of the PC
market, in which Microsoft/Netscape happens to be dominant. There is
obviously nothing in the HTML specs dictating what fonts browsers
"should" use; such a dictum would be utterly contrary to the spirit
and letter of the Web.
At the Bank we have a "Public Information" office, a team of women
who take phone and e-mail queries from the public: "What's the yield
of 5-year treasury bills?", that sort of thing.
They all have 21" monitors, because they run multiple database
applications at once, several with browser front-ends. Recently one
of the women asked if I could "make all the text bigger", because she
had trouble reading a lot of the small fonts on her large monitor.
I changed the Windows setting to "large font", and her default
Netscape screen font to Arial, and she was delighted... still had the
same amount of screen real-estate (1600x1280), but could read
everything much better. Within a few days, every person in that
department had changed her settings accordingly.
So are these women doing something wrong, because now my pages
display differently on their systems than they did before? Hardly. My
pages display *differently*, but they don't *break*, because I don't
make any groundless assumptions about what hardware and software all
of my 100,000 weekly visitors will be using, or what screen fonts
they find most comfortable to read. Or whether or not they may be
running multiple, windowed browser iterations at once. And so on.
-----------
Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: http://www.almonte.com/
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The NEW Web Consultants Association FORUMS and CHAT:
Register Today at: http://just4u.com/forums/
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
Give the Gift of Life This Year...
Just4U Stop Smoking Support forum - helping smokers for
over three years-tell a friend: http://just4u.com/forums/
To get 500 Banner Ads for FREE
go to http://www.linkbuddies.com/start.go?id=111261
---------------------------------------------------------------------
