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Stop Using Small Font Sizes

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Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#111

Post by Silhouette »

martinced wrote: post #13
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…

Strong point you're making here. Pantone-calibrated monitors only make sense when you'll be doing actual printing. A webdesigner using Pantone shades for a website is just being a delusional fool.

A webdesigner using Pantone shades for a website is just being a delusional fool.

Expecting everyone viewing your site to see a precisely matched colour, whether it's from a PMS chip or any other reference, is... optimistic.

But that doesn't make starting from a client's standard Pantone branding colours (or rather, their official RGB equivalents) delusional. It won't get perfect results, but what would be a better choice?

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#113

Post by alecperkins »

The idea that small font sizes are acceptable because “users can zoom” is fucking ridiculous, and I am extremely disappointed to see it suggested here. That is absolutely the wrong attitude. If a user has to go out of their way to use your interface, you're doing it wrong. No question. Interfaces should bend over backward for their users, not the other way around. Yes, you can't satisfy every edge case, but the default attitude must not be “well, users can just use this workaround”. That thinking is why we have crappy interfaces. If that's your approach for building interfaces, please stop building interfaces, for the sake of the user.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#114

Post by coldtea »

DanBC wrote: post #84
dredmorbius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, Gamma.

Though that has changed 2 OS versions ago -- new Macs come with the same gamma as PCs.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#115

Post by coldtea »

Fargren wrote: post #99
coldtea wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the quality of the monitors nowadays, and standard profiles, it's not that far off. We're not in the nineties, monitor technology wise.

I assume you live in Europe, the USA or maybe Canada. In much of the world, people are still using CRTs or ten-year-old LCDs in large amounts.

I currently live in SE Asia. And everybody is using LCDs.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#116

Post by kadavy »

I redesigned my blog recently[1] and purposely made the type slightly bigger than intuitively felt comfortable. The funny thing is, plenty of people complain about it being too big, but nobody complained when it was way too small.

[1] http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/reverse-engineering-redesign/

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#117

Post by raingrove »

aranjedeath wrote: post #106
raingrove wrote: post #71

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.

There appears to be a bug! http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=172281

removing -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased in the CSS seems to restore subpixel anti-alising.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#118

Post by jqrd »

TL;DR: use vh/vw CSS units in your bookmarklets.

I have a 15" MBP (older than retina, but higher resolution than the default configuration, 1680x1050) and another laptop with same screen size and even higher resolution (1920x1200), and most of the time I need to zoom in to comfortably read text for long periods.

I also have some grips with contrast, so I ended up using a bookmarklet that increases the text size and improves contrast, based on the Darken bookmarklet popularized in LifeHacker some time ago.

The interesting change is that since I browse with my browser window maximized most of the time, I took advantage of the vh CSS (vh = Viewport Height) unit to find the text size I'm most comfortable with, and then I can use the same bookmarklet in both computers.

Unfortunately VH/VW is relative to the window size, not screen size, so I wouldn't recommend using it for websites in general -- although for mobile web apps it should be a great fit!

The gist of it is:

font-size:2.5vh !important; line-height:4vh !important; background: black ! important; color: #DDD !important; text-shadow: 0 0 black !important;

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#119

Post by rhizome »

jsnell wrote: post #89
jay_kyburz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

For me and my Nexus 4, double-tap re-zooms to the width of the element tapped.

Re: Stop Using Small Font Sizes

#120

Post by steveax »

Too wrote: post #67
pmb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1pt is a unit of length. One point is 1/72 of an inch. It should be the same height now that it ever was, even on old monitors.

Not in CSS, 1pt is always x pixels regardless of how many DPI you have.

Nope, it's way more complicated than that. Device pixels, CSS pixels, a pixel is not a pixel. PPK on the subject:

http://fronteers.nl/congres/2012/sessions/a-pixel-is-not-a-p...

Points are a terrible unit for specifying font sizes for the screen. Use px or proportional units (em, percentages, etc.). Points are for print, not screen.

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