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Re: browser zoom VS text zoom

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From: Cameron Cundiff
Date: Nov 30, 2013 2:43PM

Thanks for the clarification Alastair, now I understand the distinction between zoom and text only zoom. You might also try to sniff for various responsive frameworks via CSS file names.

> On Nov 30, 2013, at 1:07 PM, Alastair Campbell < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Hi Cameron,
>
> A realistic demo would involve a browser plugin, but I can provide some
> steps to show what it's like:
>
> 1. Open www.bbc.co.uk in a browser with both zoom and text-only zoom.
> Safari version >6, Firefox >3, I think IE >8 as well? Not Chrome/Opera as
> they don't have text-only zoom.
>
> The default is zoom, and if you bump it up 200% with cntl/cmd and +, you
> get a lot of horizontal scrolling. If you switch to text-only, the
> experience is better. Not great, but better as there's no horizontal
> scrolling (something people a magnifier find really hard to deal with).
>
> The BBC (homepage at least) isn't a responsive site and doesn't declare a
> viewport, so imagine the browser automatically switched to text-zoom onload
> of the first page.
>
> 2. The second example would be bostonglobe.com. If you open that (same
> browser and settings) you'll get a lot of unreadable, overlapping text with
> text-only zoom.
>
> The globe does declare viewport though, so imagine it automatically
> switched to zoom. If you switch to zoom, you'll get the best experience so
> far as it then uses the mobile-sized styles.
>
> Touch-screens, or rather non-desktop devices are interesting, as the
> mechanics of zoom are different. In that case they don't have text-zoom at
> all (or very few devices do), and zoom works like a screen-magnifier. I
> think there are improvements to be made for mobile zooming, but it doesn't
> affect this conversation and I would rather deal with it separately.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -Alastair
> > >