Phil Gyford

Writing

Thursday 6 March 2003

PreviousIndexNext Testing font sizes

Update, 10 March 2003: You can ignore this now as I’ve since changed how font sizes are specified.

A few people have complained recently that the fonts on this site are too small to read without resizing them in their browser. This has puzzled me as I’ve been unable to replicate the problem on any browser I’ve tried. So, if you have a moment, please help with my little font size experiment…

If you go to this page you can alter which CSS stylesheets are used to display this site. The ‘Default’ style measures fonts in ems. Each of the two ‘Font test’ skins use different methods. All font sizes look fine for me on Mozilla 1.3a, Netscape 4.7, and IE 4, 5 and 6 on Windows XP, and Mozilla 1.2 and the IE 5.2 on Mac OS X.

If any of the three styles makes the fonts too small for you to read then I’d love to know your browser, operating system, and which of the other styles are readable for you. Post your comment here. Thanks!

Comments

Nope - all way tiny.

I went to anoter site a while back and it had the same problem you're having. Can't remember which it was atm obviously but will report back if I find it!

Posted by Cait on 6 March 2003, 8:57 pm | Link

Nope, all look fine to me, and I even wear glasses.. ;) Using: IE 6 on WinXP

Posted by TC on 7 March 2003, 10:43 am | Link

IE6 Win 98. "Print" setting changed font to a Roman and was harder to read. A variable you don't mention is the Display setting in Windows. Higher display resolution makes everything smaller, including print, even when all other variables are the same.

Posted by Art Montagne on 7 March 2003, 11:51 am | Link

"Print" isn't designed to be read on screen so the Display setting is irrelevant. Which is why I don't mention it in this post.

Posted by Phil Gyford on 7 March 2003, 12:28 pm | Link

On the test pages I had to resize text on the defualt page but not on the others. (I'm on W98/IE5. Display 1024x768.)

Posted by Julian Manning on 7 March 2003, 3:10 pm | Link

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