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

Post by clintavo » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 5:12 PM UTC

biot wrote: post #86

clintavo wrote: post #48

"At age 40, only half the light gets through to the retina as it did at age 20." Well, at least now I know why I'm constantly having to turn the fucking lights on when reading something on paper - that seemed like a new development. I'm 42.

Is there a reference for this? The link on the site only goes to another site that makes the claim. I'm very close to 40 and haven't noticed this... though perhaps the brain compensates for it.

Post by bzbarsky » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 5:25 PM UTC

Chris_Newton wrote: post #80

blahedo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For another thing, these days pixel densities can vary by at least a factor of 3 between devices. It pains me to point this out, but the solution to this particular problem is that CSS has redefined what "pixel" means, or rather, they've made "px" stand for something slightly different. Specifically, the "px" specifier now is a scaled length unit, and corresponds to whatever length subtends the same arc in a user's…

Yes, CSS has an unhelpful definition of pixels, which AFAICS is almost universally ignored. No doubt it was well-intentioned, but in the real world, pixels have fixed sizes and display devices do not have infinite resolutions. The difference between professional quality web design and an amateurish mess can be as simple as paying attention to the real pixel grid that your beautiful vector icon/font/whatever will be d…

Post by wladimir » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 5:47 PM UTC

dextorious wrote: post #71

wladimir wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now, if we could provide bitmap assets that could be zoomed in the same way The most common way (used for icons) is to provide multiple bitmaps and load the right one depending on screen DPI. You can do this on your site too. And there's of course vector graphics (SVG), if you don't mind some extra processing on the client for rendering...

Yes, you could provide multiple bitmaps in a website now, but in a convoluted way (with some custom javascript checking for resize events etc). In the icons case, it happens automatically. As for SVG, client rendering time would be insignificant for most case (for a desktop machine at least, they have CPU to spare). But currently used IE version (> 6) for one don't support SVG. And the main problem are bitmap assets…

Post by patio11 » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 6:22 PM UTC

SimonPStevens wrote: post #17

On the surface the statements seems to make sense and the arguments are well put across, but unless someone actually A/B tests it and proves that it makes a difference to readership, or conversions (or whatever your goal is) then it's currently just unsubstantiated theory.

Post by keithpeter » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 6:33 PM UTC

Corrado wrote: post #10

I agree completely with this article. As I've gotten older (now 43) I have had more and more trouble reading web sites. In fact, I've noticed lately that I don't even try on some sites that have "small" fonts, I just close the tab. There are some sites that I really like and I generally depend on my browser to help me out. Chrome has a good habit of remembering my page zoom on a particular site so I don't even notice…