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Re: Increase Font Size vs. Zoom

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From: Susanne Jäger
Date: Nov 13, 2012 11:22AM

David Ashleydale schrieb am 13.11.2012 18:32:

> Do you think it would be valuable to tell our development and design teams
> that among their testing tools, they should always try IE's Text Size -
> Largest and ensure that the page doesn't break? That is, ensure that all of
> the text is still readable and not obscured by other page elements?

Users of other browsers are able to change the prefered font-size. In my
opinion zooming shouldn't be required - pages should respect user
settings, without intervention of the visitor.

> I ran this by one developer already and he said he thinks it's almost
> impossible to do. He pointed to a page that has a restricted container size
> that is based on the size of the image it's next to. He said that if
> someone increases the font size only, the only way for the text to be
> readable is if its container also grows, but it can't grow without wrecking
> the entire page.

I think this is bad design. With moderate bad eyesight I prefer 16 to
18px font-size (depending on monitor settings) for copytext and know a
lot of pages that break if I enforce this by blowing up font-size only
(I don't like full page zoom and disabled this in my browser) or minimum
font-size.

>
> We can, of course, go back to the drawing board and actually plan for how
> we want the pages to look and behave when someone increases the text size,
> but, man, that's a lot of work.
>
> I might put this in everyone's back pockets as something to think about for
> future pages, and to think about for the next redesign.

That sounds like a good idea. It's often more easy to accept flexibility
of a layout if you plan it from the beginning.

greetings
Susanne