"I have never encountered a friend, family member or other "civilian" who has a problem scrolling in either direction if necessary."
A horizontal scrollbar does not prevent users from accessing content but it reduces the efficiency with which they can do so. Not only does zooming introduce the horizontal scrollbar but it greatly increases the amount of vertical scrolling that is required compared with text sizing. Horizontal scrollbars cause terrible usability problems for people who use screen magnification because the scrollbar is not present except when they scroll to the very bottom of the page. If the content they wanted to view was in the top right-hand corner they have to scroll to the bottom of the page and back up again. Having seen this occur during many user testing sessions I advise strongly against horizontal scrollbars. In my view, zooming and text sizing are appropriate for different needs. For relatively small text size increases I think that text sizing is appropriate because it does not result in a horizontal scrollbar. If larger text sizes are required I would advise people to use the zoom function because the page layout often breaks badly at large text sizes (there are limits to what is achievable even when a site is designed well). Steve -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Al Sparber Sent: 03 July 2008 20:41 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WSG] Browsers and Zooming >> I wonder what a partially sighted user would thing of these >> 'improvements'. Would they be glad that now they can see images a >> little easier and the layout seems to break less or would they be >> annoyed at the sudden appearance of a horizontal scrollbar? I think web developers have an irrational fear of scrollbars :-) They are tools to scroll a window, not signs of bad design. I have never encountered a friend, family member or other "civilian" who has a problem scrolling in either direction if necessary. For folks who need to increase the text size for a specific page (perhaps because the designer set microscopic font-sizes) a true zoom, rather than a text resize, preserves the line-length proportions in a fixed-width layout. >> >> Or would they be using screen magnification software anyway, and it >> wouldn't make a difference to them? Probably not. There are far more important issues to get bogged down in ;-) -- Al Sparber - PVII http://www.projectseven.com Fully Automated Menu Systems | Galleries | Widgets http://www.projectseven.com/go/Elevators ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
