101–110 of 126 posts
huh, initially I thought "It is not THAT big of a problem" but after reading his article (easily) then trying to read an article in some of his example offenders sites...I can see his point. Consider my eyes opened... (and not squinting.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> expecting the average user to know that they can zoom I'm all for never overestimating the technical literacy of one's users, but .. really? The average person doesn't even know they CAN zoom? That seems an "ignoratum too far", like not knowing they can alter the volume on their stereo. Touch screen devices make it ridiculously easy, too. Surely the average user has worked out by now that they can change the size o…
Average desktop user does not know how to zoom. I have done hundreds of usability tests and user observation in my time - the number of folk who know how to zoom text is vanishingly small.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> expecting the average user to know that they can zoom I'm all for never overestimating the technical literacy of one's users, but .. really? The average person doesn't even know they CAN zoom? That seems an "ignoratum too far", like not knowing they can alter the volume on their stereo. Touch screen devices make it ridiculously easy, too. Surely the average user has worked out by now that they can change the size o…
I'm all for never overestimating the technical literacy of one's users, but .. really? The average person doesn't even know they CAN zoom? That seems an "ignoratum too far", like not knowing they can alter the volume on their stereo. Average desktop user does not know how to zoom. I have done hundreds of usability tests and user observation in my time - the number of folk who know how to zoom text is vanishingly smal…
If you use an absolute font size and get it right, fine. If not, I won't read your site. I'm too lazy to use ⌘-+. Sorry. (Actually, if your site is really interesting, I might be motivated to write a user script to fix your fonts and other usability problems. But your site is unlikely to be that interesting.) There is no need to specify an absolute font size. Use only relative font sizes (and be careful about ratios…
Yet this is what you're telling your browser by maximising the window NSEW, and the site obeys it, which is good. The point of so much real estate and a windowing system is not to have it end up empty, unless asked to. I hate it when sites make undue assumptions and reimplement in-browser window management. My browser is not my OS.
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…
IMHO, the default line height in browsers is just too narrow.
Agreed, though, that it's a matter of what you're used to. But when you're used to high quality typography designed to make the text easy to read, you tend to notice the mistakes.
Here are some rules I go by:
- Use an appropriate font designed for screen display
- Avoid small font sizes: 16px is a good default, less than 14px is usually too small
- Use dark text on light background
- Typeset on a vertical grid with 130-150% of line height
- Use a reasonable line length (no more than 80 characters)
All these rules aim to make the text easy to read and easy on the eyes.
Sub-pixel anti-aliasing doesn't seem to work on your site. I find that really annoying. I am using Google Chrome 25 on OS X 10.8.2.
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…
I need to press ⌘-+ three times to get to something reasonable that I can read without straining my eyes. Chrome remembers the setting, though, so it's not a big problem in practice.
We just went through this like a week or two ago. Yeesh. Every browser I use has support for text resizing, default text sizes, or zoom levels. Android WebKit has double-tap and reflow. I don't see why this is a problem demanding such rants. Ironically the first thing I did when the page loaded was tap Ctrl+- Ctrl+-.
If you are running a website, I encourage you to test different font sizes and measure the difference in engagement. You might be surprised.
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…
Bizarrely, no, it doesn't. A lot of trendy design styles like low contrast bright sites and tiny (or, recently, huge) text really are just as impractical and/or do look just as ugly on a very good screen to a trained eye.