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] *******************************************************************
