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

16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake

smashingmagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 146 posts

Re: 16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake

#31

Post by _delirium »

mikeleeorg wrote: post #20

I find myself zooming nearly 80% of the sites I visit now, including Google Docs. And I'm always a little bummed that Google's Spreadsheets give me this warning: "Your browser's current zoom setting is not fully supported. Please reset to default zoom."

Same here; since Chrome remembers your zoom settings per-domain, I sometimes forget which sites I'm viewing zoomed versus in the default sizes, so when I use a fresh browser or a different computer it comes as a surprise how unreadable some of my frequently visited sites are (HN being one).

Re: 16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake

#32

Post by dextorious »

Simon_M wrote: post #8

Am I missing something? The physical size of a 16px font will surely vary based on resolution and screen size. So claims such as '16px is the same as most books' are clearly nonsense.

He means "for the most common monitor DPIs", duh.

The problem is: due to the need to mix and align with bitmap graphics, web design is most convenient when specifying font sizes in pixels (except for simple pages, like HN and such, fluid designs cannot cover most cases in a mainstream enough fashion).

So, given that, he had to mention a specific pixel setting. But he took into account most common DPIs. For the majority of users they do not vary that much, around 100-120 dpi.

(Btw, have you read the article? He is aware of that, and he even gives examples of 16px in different DPI screens).

Re: 16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake

#36

Post by bryanlarsen »

keeperofdakeys wrote: post #21
guard-of-terra wrote: post #2

Most web sites break down when fonts are upscaled. Sad but true. I configured my mother's firefox to do that, it works, but most of the web doesn't look good. Which is sad. My eyes aren't very good too and they prefer bigger fonts. In fact, most people have vision problems those days.

Then you learn most mobile sites disable user scrolling, because of a bug on iOS that causes non-standard zoom levels to cause text to wrap off the screen when changing orientation. So if you did this and your site isn't readable on someones device, they can't even fix it.

Thanks, I was wondering why so many sites are broken on WebOS.

Re: 16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake

#37

Post by inflatablenerd »

The biggest failing I see this is argument is hierarchy. Sure, 16 point Georgia looks sexy as hell. If you have a text heavy website with little navigation, I'd definately recommend it. But in real world design situations, it's a mess. Even the Information Architects site looks flat. There's no easy way to guide the eyes because everything is ultra readable. There's no structure. It's an idealistic shortcut to readability.

For me, the most pleasurable reading experience I can think of is Instapaper on an iPad. What's the default size on that? I could be wrong, but I doubt it's anything larger than 14-16.

Besides, is it really a "costly mistake"? Is Facebook is failure because the text is small? Is Apple's website is design disaster? Both sites (and many more) feature a mix of large and small text with modest sized body. They're navigation is thought out and structured.

The 16 pixels argument encourages the opposite of that.

Re: 16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake

#38

Post by Thrymr »

dextorious wrote: post #32
Simon_M wrote: post #8

Am I missing something? The physical size of a 16px font will surely vary based on resolution and screen size. So claims such as '16px is the same as most books' are clearly nonsense.

He means "for the most common monitor DPIs", duh. The problem is: due to the need to mix and align with bitmap graphics, web design is most convenient when specifying font sizes in pixels (except for simple pages, like HN and such, fluid designs cannot cover most cases in a mainstream enough fashion). So, given that, he had to mention a specific pixel setting. But he took into account most common DPIs. For the majori…

Can we get over specifying text size by pixels already? You don't know what DPI monitor I will have when I look at your pages.

Re: 16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake

#40

Post by euroclydon »

wladimir wrote: post #33

Why "16 pixels"? Wouldn't scaling fonts based in cm/inch make more sense to be resolution independent, especially important on mobile devices?

Yeah, I set my paragraph font size to 100%, which Chrome tells me is 14px at normal zoom level. Maybe I should bump it up to 115%.
Post reply on HN