Topic: Font size

this should probably go in general discussion as there really is a tight community here now and probably more than 50% are mad scientists, but I was wondering what the feelings were on font size?

I generally find it too small, but not by a long way.

Firstly the design has been around for years now and could probably do with an update, pixel fonts aren't what they used to be, and people like to be able to comfortably read the text their victim to.

But also from a general accessibility and readability point of view with screen resolutions getting higher and monitors getting larger, what was once a nice small font is now a very tiny font and makes it difficult to read. Sure this may sound like it's just my opinion and based on my hardware (both at work and home mind you) but seeing as this is a professionals forum mostly, I imagine that many other users here have similar issues.

Would it be a bad idea to increase the font size a couple of pixels in size?

I think it's currently set to 69% of the browsers default, which should be 16. so that makes it about 11. I think 12 to 14 would make the world of difference without losing screen real estate.

Cheers,

well, if that turns out to be of general interest, I don't see why not.

But let it be stated for the record, Kuckus put in a lot of work to allow client-end-font-resizing
even with the most brain-dead browser at that time (IE 5, I believe), and that seems to me
to still work pretty well.
If this does not get a majority approval, my suggestion would be to either use your browser's
enlargment feature, or it's "custom css" feature to enlarge the font size just for you.

Or, we can add one of these 'increase/decrease font size' buttons, but it would have to be
remembered in a cookie...

so long,

->Tyberius Prime

I have no problem with the font size. But font size options in the Asylum would be good. Whenever I look at the Asylum on my Linux, which shows on my CRT, the text is so dull and unclear I increase font size to read anything. But just to let you know, I never design any of my websites with anything smaller than this.

I like this size actually.

--

Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

Funny.



(Edited by zavaboy on 12-20-2007 22:55)

Great, I'm happy it's open to discussion.

I want to add that I did browse through the code and it is of a good quality for font size adjustment, I meant no disrespect there. However setting a custom CSS or constantly resizing my browsers font settings isn't ideal, and I would think that a larger default size would be a solution to that.

Agreed with TP

pixel font sizes are only a problem in obsolote browsers, and even there it's possible to force the font-sizes. Any half decent browser supports per site styling/zoom settings. Therefore I don't see the point with font-size options on web sites.

Any time I have a hard time reading (whether here or elsewhere), a simple CTL+ solves it
I would see no problem with a slight increase in size here, but I wouldn't consider it necessary either.

Personally I find the 'increase/decrease font' buttons annoying, just by there mere persence...

I'm with DL.

I wouldn't mind seeing the font size a point or two larger. Like DL-44, when I have difficulty reading a page, I press Ctrl-+. Sometimes it gets tiresome doing that on every thread, particularly when I read about half way down a thread and realize I'm getting eye strain from reading the font and use Ctrl-+ and then have to find where I was reading because the page reformatted.

One or two points larger would be nice.

.



-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

I just noticed - I can set a trillion bloody things 'per site' in opera - but default zoom isn't one of them.
How much of an oversight is that? (paraphrased as not to hurt poi's feelings )

It seems to me that setting the deafault size for the site to be one or two points larger wouldn't be such a bad idea then, as, from reading this thread it seems most users ctrl+ a couple of times anyway.

I'm against the font resize buttons also.

We could perhaps try giving it a test run?

My main point here is that if the majority of users have to change their browser settings to read a site comfortably, then the font size for that site is incorrect (It doesn't cater to its users needs).

I have no problem reading the Asylum at home, but here, at my brother's place the screen is much further from the mouse+keyboard and the resolution quite high hence I increase the fonts a bit.

Tyberius Prime: don't worry, I'm not the last one to finger point incoherent things in Opera. I thought per site zoom settings was in 9.5, but I could be wrong.

As for zooming in the browser I prefer Ctrl+mouseWheel with FitToWidth turnt on of course

(but then, I've been ignoring those 'there is an update' messages the last couple of weeks... so never mind silly me...)

( you didn't miss the update, 9.5 is in beta )

Ok, I hate to go about this but I feel strongly enough about it to feel that the site needs updating, before you respond at a knee jerk I do not believe that my opinion on this is simply because of my own preferences, it's purely because I believe that the Ozone Asylum needs to be more future proof.


consider this screen shot from Motivation killers.



I'm using a new iMac with Leopard installed, and a screen resolution of 1680 x 1050 (this also happens to be the resolution I have at home on my Ubuntu PC).

You'll notice the small font is actually illegible, it's broken, yes increasing the font-size for the page with my browsers controls does make this more readable, but no I don't find this acceptable as I have to readjust when I go to another website, and then again apply this when I return.

I really think this should be considered more, and even given a practice run through.

ok... kuckus back in the day used some clever css hackery to tie the font size to 11 pixels (or 69% of the default font size of 16 in most common browser's including safari(!)).
The 'small' font is defined as 0.8em; , so it should be about 55% of 16 pixels, or 8 pixels rarge.

That's tiny (and supposed to be tiny) but still pretty reasonable to render.

Now... is this a bug in Safari? Or is it a side effect of our 'ie 5.5 compability measure to allow font size expression in ems'?

Who has the scope on this in the current day and age?

Oh, I was using Firefox 2.0.0.11 (the latest) BTW.

I would consider making the regular font-size 12 pixels, and making small come in at 10, as I've found font depending that anything less than 10 can be a bugger to render.

Yuk it's everywhere.



I don't consider this a bug, it's and issue with regards to screen resolution and browsers rendering of fonts.

Note the font in the footer doesn't have the same problem, so it's seems perhaps that the font sizes aren't coming out in absolute values?





(Edited by Blaise on 01-30-2008 11:03)

Well, the footer is .1 ems larger than 'small', which explains why you can read it .

Ah well there you go then, so let's increase the font size.

I'm sorry.

Ah, so you have the same issue then?

No ... works fine in FF. I just noticed that 2 examples were my posts.

Ah, I see, hah.

You were on a role of doing small sized posts, FWIW, Poi's been doing it recently too

I used [ small /] a few times recently when trying to not disrupt the c(o)urse of a few threads. Not sure how that works out, or it's perceived as such.

[edit] Small'ing this post to keep the thread on track [/edit]


(Edited by poi on 03-10-2008 14:04)

same here ... I used [ small ] for OT comments

I like this size actually.


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I like this size actually

(Edited by kenvinlee89 on 07-27-2011 05:38)