Font sizes! (Text too small.) [LWN.net]

Font sizes! (Text too small.)

Posted May 31, 2002 21:28 UTC (Fri) by rknop (guest, #66)
Parent article: Welcome to the new LWN.net!

My first reaction was that, oh no, they've gone and made the fonts smaller.

Now, granted, with Galeon, it's very easy to click the little expander button a couple of times and make the thing readable again, but....

It seems to me that a basic precept of web design should be that the users have chosen their default browser font size because that is the font size that they find readable and in which they want to see the bulk of the "text" that they see.

Given this, I'd love to see LWN made the standard text of the articles be the standard font size, not something resized.

(The headers are too big too; I liked the old LWN Daily smaller headers, but that's not something I really care enough about to comment on, even though I just did, so hmmm.)

-Rob

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Font sizes! (Text too small.)

Posted May 31, 2002 21:59 UTC (Fri) by bluecobra (guest, #195) [Link]

I agree with this, FYI: I'm using Mozilla on a 1600x1200 display

Font sizes! (Text too small.)

Posted May 31, 2002 22:34 UTC (Fri) by smeg4brains (subscriber, #207) [Link]

I don't know about mozilla, but at least with Galeon, you can specify a minimum font size as well as a default font size.

I never even noticed, nor have I ever gotten to see the "font sizes that are too small".

--
Nothing is as simple as it seems at first
Or as hopeless as it seems in the middle
Or as finished as it seems in the end

Font sizes! (Text too small.)

Posted Jun 5, 2002 18:22 UTC (Wed) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link]

Actually, Mozilla (and, by extension, Galeon, although I haven't actually figured out how to set it in Galeon yet) has a nifty little option that specifies a minimum font size. Once I enabled that, I've never had a problem (Mozilla requires that all fonts be at least that minimum size, even if the stylesheet or something else specifies otherwise). Unfortunately, it's not a user-visible preferences item (you have to manually edit the .js file for now), but it works on all recent versions of Mozilla I've messed with (Linux, Win32, 0.98+).

Check the Mozilla Organization for more info, or more specifically here. It's under UI look-and-feel issues. Even though this page covers Unix-specific issues, that particular fix seems to work under Windows as well. Good luck finding the config file, though, esp. under NT/2000.

Font sizes! (Text too small.)

Posted Jun 5, 2002 18:27 UTC (Wed) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link]

Nevermind. I'd forgotten about the ability to set the minimum font size in Galeon (actually, I haven't needed to bother yet), and it seems that Mozilla (at least 1.0rc3--don't know about earlier ones) has added that option to the Preferences/Appearance/Fonts tab.

My goof.