Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop Using Small Font Sizes

hn.explodie.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 126 posts

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#31

Post by crazygringo »

aranjedeath wrote: post #19
crazygringo wrote: post #16

On the other hand, don't use font sizes that are too big (I've noticed that on a number of blogs and startup sites recently). It might look great on your large iMac screen, but when I read it with an 11" MBA, it's pretty frustrating to only be able to see a handful of lines of text at the same time. Even this blog which is doing the complaining, I wish I could see more of the text at the same time. Though it's a matt…

How wide is your screen (in px)? Because the max width of my layout is around the old 760px standard. You should be able to see everything (even if, as you say, it's a bit too large). On the other hand, it's a pretty valid critique. To be honest I forgot that there are 11 inch screens (or, screens that are larger than phones but smaller than 17inch desktop monitors). I'm not on any sort of a big screen. And indeed, m…

Not width I'm talking about (that's fine), it's the height.

It's funny, because screen height shouldn't affect "readability" (other than making you scroll more often), but with these large-font blogs/sites, they give me a certain feeling of "claustrophobia" -- that I can't see a couple paragraphs' worth to come, or can't see the last couple paragraphs I read.

I think it might be that it prevents me from being able to scan content easily, the way you can on a printed page, where you can quickly skip to the part you can tell is relevant to you.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#32

Post by crazygringo »

georgemcbay wrote: post #3

I don't mind small font sizes as long as you don't do anything to break zoom in the browser. What is killing me a lot more lately is the trend towards extremely low contrast sites, like white backgrounds with almost-white text. This is starting to be everywhere recently and it is horrible. I'm sure that design looks great on your Pantone-calibrated monitor, designer, but on mine I can barely even see there are words…

Idea: a browser feature (plugin) just like zoom, only that would up the contrast on sites (or decrease, too).

It would have to be semi-intelligent to adjust the brightness accordingly (so it would work both on light-gray-on-white sites and dark-gray-on-black sites), but having an in-browser contrast control would be great.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#33

Post by rhizome »

dgunn wrote: post #11

It's great to see this on HN where there are literally fonts as low as 7pt being used... Everyone keeps saying that it's fine as long as zoom functions correctly. Well it's also fine to use a font size widely accepted as readable. 7pt? Really? Why? Because zoom works? I know a lot of people who read HN that use style bot to increase the font size. To act like this isn't an issue seems really weird to me. Ctrl+- is th…

And zoom does not function correctly on the default Android browser.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#34

Post by mortehu »

luser001 wrote: post #30

Hear, hear! :) I'm really happy to see this get to the front page. But why pixels (px) and not points (pt)? I made a site using 12pt text and it looks good everywhere (ipad, iphone, chromebook, linux, windows, mac). I suspect 16px is going to look too small on a Retina Macbook (I don't own one, so I wouldn't know).

From the CSS specification:

px: pixel units — 1px is equal to 0.75pt.

[...]

The reference pixel is the visual angle of one pixel on a device with a pixel density of 96dpi and a distance from the reader of an arm's length. For a nominal arm's length of 28 inches, the visual angle is therefore about 0.0213 degrees. For reading at arm's length, 1px thus corresponds to about 0.26 mm (1/96 inch).

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html#length-units

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#35

Post by rhizome »

crazygringo wrote: post #16

On the other hand, don't use font sizes that are too big (I've noticed that on a number of blogs and startup sites recently). It might look great on your large iMac screen, but when I read it with an 11" MBA, it's pretty frustrating to only be able to see a handful of lines of text at the same time. Even this blog which is doing the complaining, I wish I could see more of the text at the same time. Though it's a matt…

That style is most friendly to tablets. The next page is just a thumb-swipe away.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#36

Post by tterrace »

georgemcbay wrote: post #3

I don't mind small font sizes as long as you don't do anything to break zoom in the browser. What is killing me a lot more lately is the trend towards extremely low contrast sites, like white backgrounds with almost-white text. This is starting to be everywhere recently and it is horrible. I'm sure that design looks great on your Pantone-calibrated monitor, designer, but on mine I can barely even see there are words…

I haven't seen anything that breaks zoom in the browser (do you have an example?) but many of the responsive-type sites break the pinch zooming on mobile which is extremely annoying, especially if they have images that hang off the viewable area of the screen.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#37

Post by simcop2387 »

This is one of the reasons that I can't leave firefox. It's got a really nice feature in the Advanced fonts & colors configuration that lets you set a minimum font size. These days I keep it set to 12pt so that sites can't start putting 2-3pt fonts on there.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#38

Post by john_butts »

aranjedeath wrote: post #8
mtitus16 wrote: post #4

This is literally a rehashing of this: http://jxnblk.tumblr.com/post/41796724549/im-sick-of-your-ti... from 3 weeks ago.

Thanks for pointing it out, I didn't see that article. After having read that article, I'll concede the fundamental argument is the same. I don't have a smartphone, however. The only place I will ever read something is on my desktop computer, and that's what I want. Media queries or "mobile-first design" can be used to solve the issue from both sides of that complaint.

Your site is barely readable and unzoomable on my phone where I would normally read a short blog post from an unknown but potentially interesting site. It's a very real glass house situation.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#39

Post by redegg »

People are lazy. They want to see how much text is there for them to read before having the slightest intent.

Making text bigger makes that decision more difficult. It also creates the delusion that there is more to read than there actually is.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#40

Post by 001sky »

crazygringo wrote: post #16

On the other hand, don't use font sizes that are too big (I've noticed that on a number of blogs and startup sites recently). It might look great on your large iMac screen, but when I read it with an 11" MBA, it's pretty frustrating to only be able to see a handful of lines of text at the same time. Even this blog which is doing the complaining, I wish I could see more of the text at the same time. Though it's a matt…

Agree with these points. Too large text and "double-spaced" etc. can also look like garbage. I find I can read HN very legibly though. One of the reliably better presentations of text, IMHO. Rather than tone down the blacks, there is a warm-coloured off-white background, etc to diffuse the contrast harshness.
Post reply on HN