On 2007/05/28 20:14 (GMT+1000) Steve Olive apparently typed: > sizes and hasn't been raised. Australian, New Zealand, UK and European > default printed font size when word processing is 12 pt Times New Roman > whilst the US uses 10 pt Times New Roman,
Where did this statistic come from? > so they are used to smaller text > with more information crammed into each page. > This is a personal opinion of the font sizes displayed on a 19" 1280 x 1024 @ > 96 PPI LCD monitor in relation to the default printed font size. My eyes are > approximately 65 cm from the screen and I do wear glasses for mild myopia > (short sightedness). 96 would be your system setting. A 19" SXGA (1280x1024) display is 86, slightly lower than the modern average. http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/dpi.html * http://blogs.msdn.com/fontblog/archive/2005/11/08/490490.aspx explains the doz 96 DPI genesis. > So, how do you solve this issue? That most others do something wrong is not justification to not do the right thing yourself. Web pages text sizes have a much too wide range. Reduce the problem by always doing the right thing, and respecting the visitors' decisions what sizES are best. Don't make your site a #1 usability problem. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html Don't make visitors have to do anything more than read and select links to open. Zoom is a defense mechanism. Don't make them need to use it. > You can't - that's what makes us "web designers". We all have preferences for > font sizes, colours, screen layout and more; then we have to deal with a > clients' preconceived ideas on what THEIR web site should look like. When the client inquires about the starting point being "wrong", teach him how to set his own so that it's just right for him, as everyone is presumed to have done. Do this with a small laptop to highlight the potential problem with doing otherwise than 100%. If he's an exclusively IE user, show him how to put the text sizer on the toolbar where M$ should have put it in the first place, or do it for him. Don't make visitors want to send you to "Morons in Web Space" http://www.cameratim.com/personal/soapbox/morons-in-webspace . > However we need to be aware that many people using the Internet won't have > 19" > LCD, 21" LCD, 20" widescreens, 24" widescreens or 30" widescreens or dual Absolutely. > monitor setups. We need to make sure that our designs look OK on 17" CRT > monitors at 1024 x 768 and 800 x 600 (hopefully it will still look OK on a > 15" CRT monitor too if it passes these tests). We also need to try to be realistic about user environments. DPI/PPI isn't what it was when the defaults-are-wrong mantra began many years ago. Before CSS, the standard was a mix of <font size=1>, <font size=2>, <font size=-1> and <font size=-2>. In the beginning of that period, there were no LCDs. Few knew of the existence of larger than 17" displays, much less used or could afford them. Typical were 14" nominal/13" actual CRT's at 640x480 or 800x600. A little later in the presentational-markup-as-standard period the use of 15"/14" and 17"/16" as well as 1024x768 grew, along with 640x480 dying off and 1152x864 and 1280xXXX making their almost statistically significant appearances. This period with mostly 13"-16" displays and 640x480-1024x768 resolutions saw a vast majority DPI range of roughly only 20, with an average probably somewhere in the mid-'70s. Today the average is higher, and the range is much higher. The former makes yesteryear's average 16px significantly bigger than today's, and while the latter makes it less likely to be close in physical size to the physical size on the designer's screen. Today, the bottom end of display size range is represented by the biggest selling market share - laptops. Laptops stop around 19", and start at a diminuitive 8" <http://laptop.org/>. Like with other LCDs, they should be run only at their native resolutions, which is how they are shipped. It means users are instructed they shouldn't lower resolution in order to make things bigger. Their DPIs range from about 85 (1024x768 on 15") to 150 (1024x640 on 8") to 119 (1920x1200 on 19") to 100 (1440x900 on 17"; 1280x800 on 15"), with other variations in between the low of 85 and the high of 150. Weighing the higher end stuff less heavily, a conservative estimate of the sales-weighted average is probably at least 100. From the old average of about 75, that's a 1/3 increase in DPI/PPI, which translates to a correspondingly lower pixel size, and correspondingly smaller default 12pt/16px font size (often 12pt/20px on mid- and high-end models). Plus there's that much wider range between low and high. With desktop system displays the sizes are bigger and the DPIs are lower, but they still represent a wider range between smallest and largest, and a higher average DPI, than yesteryear - somewhere around 90. As examples, the low price end is dominated by 1024x768 on 15" (85 DPI), 1280x1024 on 17" (96 DPI) and 1280x1024 on 19" (86 DPI). The middle has 1440x900 on 19" (89 DPI) and 1680x1050 on 22" (90 DPI). Upwards is 1920x1200 on 22" (103 DPI) or 23" or 24" (98 or 94 DPI) and 2560x1600 on 24" (126 DPI) or 30" (101 DPI). Even without considering the smaller average size per pixel compared to yesteryear, the very wide range between real world smallest and largest should be reason enough to never assume something other than 100% of the size the visitor prefers is better. > Then we need to consider how much should a page zoom in before breaking. This > really means using proportional measurements and not pixels, mostly due to > IEs well documented problems, but also for containers. It also means not assuming anything about the starting point except that you can't presume to improve it. Assume the only reasonable assumption, that either it was good enough to start with, or that the visitor adjusted such as to make it so. Next, make it work across a broad range of default font sizes. First make your own default the size you and/or the client likes, leaving the CSS body rule at 100%. Then test test test test widely upward and downward, using at least 3 methods (zoom, minimum, & adjusted default) to ensure it continues to work reasonably within that wide range. As web designer your focus should be on getting the proportions between the pieces of the page to work well together to please the client and maximize the site goals. Contextual sizing is perfectly fine, an integral part of design. But as soon as you touch the main content text size you're trying to control something about which you have only vague notions and over which you have no genuine control. That makes setting anything significantly deviant from 100% for main content text, in most cases, rude and arbitrary. -- "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] *******************************************************************
