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Re: good example of contrast widget?

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Apr 5, 2007 4:20PM

Austin, Darrel wrote:
> These days, they're
> fairly common on a lot of news sites

And every site implements them in a different way, if at all. And
settings don't carry from one site to the other.

> and, as such, the older argument of
> 'confusing extra set of icons on the site' doesn't seem to hold as much
> weight anymore.

Why? We're worried about computer illiterate users, but trust them to
understand cryptic icons that compete with the rest of a page's layout
and design?

> With our own site, we've had more than a few folks ask
> if they could increase the size of type on our site. It's easier for us
> to say 'use the font size widget' than to walk over to their desk and
> explain how to change all of their default window's font sizes

...all of their OS's font sizes, or just "View > Text size" in their
browser, which is something that can be explained in a single paragraph
in a help section, which you could then link to quite prominently (by
calling it something like "display settings" and having it near the top
of the page)?

> (which,
> ironically, will break a lot of our crappy vendor-written web apps that
> were all designed without any concept of browser agnosticism or font
> size variations).

So do those apps break when browser settings are changed, but not when a
text size widget is used?

> (since the
> damn browser developers STILL hide this rather important feature from
> most newbies).

Yup, been ranting about that one for years myself. Most annoying, and
certainly not in the spirit of UAAG, if you ask me.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke