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Stop Using Small Font Sizes

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Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#81

Post by dredmorbius »

I'd prefer seeing fonts specified as an offset from the browser's standard display format, and in ems rather than pixels or points. Body text must be at the user-specified size.

Contrast is another huge and growing issue. http://contrastrebellion.com/

I'm growing increasingly annoyed at sites which offer zero padding between text and display edges. At least a few pixels offset should be offered, and I prefer 50-200 for most full-screen displays.

Interstitials, pop-up nags, requests, quizzes, and the like increasingly make me likely to either close the a tab immediately, or use Firefox's RIP (Remove It Permanently) plug-in.

Fixed-position elements, especially headers and footers, but also sidebars, are similarly annoying. With the smaller overall screen resolutions of the past few years, and wide, short format 10:9 displays, vertical real estate is especially lacking. Sidebars frequently play poorly with mobile devices.

Most lately, I've found several sites which refuse to scroll vertically while on my mobile (Android). The Atlantic's mobile site among them, but there are others. Not a helpful feature.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#82

Post by dredmorbius »

bradwestness wrote: post #10

12pt Times New Roman is the standard for publishing, so that's become the go-to size for a lot of websites. It was plenty big on 800x600 displays, but I agree that it's generally too small for today's resolutions. However, the solution isn't to pick a new, slightly larger point size and just set everything to that, it's to use media queries to set an appropriate size for whatever medium the content is being displayed…

Readability is useful, though it's not painless to use on most websites.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: one of the pleasant surprises of seeing TBL's original WWW documentation posted to HN last year was how readable plain, unstyled HTML markup is. It's almost as if we have a need for two platforms: an unstyled user HTML reader for long-form works, and an HTML+Javascript applications platform for interactive sites and apps. I'm already using Firefox and Chrome somewhat in this way already.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#83

Post by edwintorok »

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…

You can use the golden ratio to find an "optimal" value for the ratio between line height, line width and font size: http://www.pearsonified.com/2011/12/golden-ratio-typography.... http://www.pearsonified.com/typography/

But of course the line height should be in relative units, not in px: http://webtypography.net/rhythm_and_proportion/vertical_moti...

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#84

Post by DanBC »

dredmorbius wrote: post #79
ciupicri wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I've heard people saying that CRT screens were better than LCD when it came to colors. A couple of problems that LCD monitors might have: - low viewing angle - color shifting if they're using a TN or MVA/PVA panel [1] - loss of dark details for MVA/PVA panels [2] - 6 bits per color channel like the pretty recent Dell U2412M monitor for example [3] Sure if you're using a good (and expensive) monitor like Del…

A given CRT would be more consistent from different angles, but, having been there and tuned color on both CRTs and LCDs, the latter tend to be far more consistent between different displays. Also over time. There are still vendor differences, and Mac vs. Windows color temperature differs as well.

> Mac vs. Windows color temperature differs as well.

And what's the thing that makes something dark on Windows become really dark on a Mac? Is that gamma?

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#85

Post by DanBC »

crazygringo wrote: post #32
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 .

I've resorted to using "Change Colors" (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/change-colors/jbmk...) - which has the advantage of allowing me to specify my own fonts too.

It doesn't always work.

I also use Readability.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#86

Post by DanBC »

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 agree that low contrast sucks.

I also agree that breaking zoom is a silly thing for designers to do.

But small font sizes, and expecting the average user to know that they can zoom, is wrong.

All three are symptoms of a bigger problem - some designers are either ignorant about usable design, or just don't care about a significant portion of users.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#87

Post by DanBC »

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…

This blog is calling for all sites to not set a font size, and then adjust everything relative to the base.

That would allow you to set your preferred "not huge" default font size and have it work everywhere, and it would allow me to set my "huge" default and also have it work everywhere.

At the moment I have to zoom[1] in lots of websites while you have to zoom out others.

[1] And I strongly preferred "zoom just the text, not everything", so if there's some secret key combo to do that it'd be great. (Chrome on OS X, but I'd switch to Firefox if I know it did it.)

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#88

Post by ExpiredLink »

srathi wrote: post #42
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…

One workaround: Use 'zap colors' bookmarklet found at https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html . I got this link from some other HN comments.

The first thing I do on a new browser is to drag the 'zap colors' bookmarklet to the bookmarks toolbar.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#89

Post by jsnell »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #54
rhizome wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And if I pinch zoom in I can't see the whole line.

First do a pinch zoom, then double-tap to make the text reflow using the new size.

(Unfortunately not in Chrome for Android, since it's too cool for usability. Should work on anything using Android's built-in webkit).

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#90

Post by DanBC »

ANTSANTS wrote: post #46
simcop2387 wrote: post #37

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.

Chromium has this feature as well. I do miss Firefox's ability to set a different font for pages written in different languages though, if only for viewing silly SJIS art...

Chrome's version is confusing and applies oddly. (IME, YMMV, etc.)
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