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From: Gareth Dart
Date: May 29, 2008 3:40AM

Georg wrote: "You _can_ also add a stylesheet switcher, as long as the
basic stylesheet allows font-resizing in the browsers regardless of such
a switcher. The simplest (and oldest) switch-version is found here...
<http://www.alistapart.com/stories/alternate/>; ...but there are plenty
of alternatives around."

Another alternative, if you want to have text resizeable via elements on
your page as well as built-in browser functionality, is to adjust the
font size of the body tag via javascript onclick events: a common
convention seems to be three links (A- A0 and A+).

You can even go a step further and store the user's preference in a
cookie, which your pages then read when they load and apply the
appropriate style.

It's also wise to have these links written to the screen via javascript
rather than text markup, so if your user is one of the ~1 in 20 who does
not have javascript enabled (or just has a non-js browser), then there
won't be three useless and confusing links just sitting there. A text
equivalent for the script content could usefully be a link to guidance
on how to resize text in major browsers.

That said, I've seen this sort of thing around less and less recently.
I'm sure that a major reason for this is the increasing user-awareness
of built-in text resizing capabilities, but if there's some other reason
why they seem to be on the wane, I'd love to know.

G

Gareth Dart
Web Developer
Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
95 Promenade, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL50 1HZ
T 01242 211128 F 01242 211122 W www.hesa.ac.uk