typical default font sizes

[Haines Brown]

I've been setting font-size 1em; as the default in my style
sheets. Until now, that seemed to be ok. But now I'm beginning to
wonder.

My aim is to have an easily readable, but not overly large text when
the user uses the default font size in his browser and uses the
typical display resolution.

I did a reinstall of my friendly browser in a different environment,
and I am surprised to find that its default for serif is Times 16 and
monospace is Courier 12.

I run a 1280 x 1024 resolution, and the text on page default appears
too large. Given my resolution, I would have expected just the
opposite. I gather that typical today is a resolution of 1024 x
768. If so, would not my browser default font size be suited to that?

The text on my web pages now appears too small. The typical and
default situation seems to make my text lines almost illegible.

--
Haines Brown
br****@hartford-hwp.com
kb****@arrl.net
www.hartford-hwp.com

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Haines Brown <br****@teufel. hartford-hwp.com> wrote:

I've been setting font-size 1em; as the default in my style
sheets.
Why?
I gather that typical today is a resolution of 1024 x
768. If so, would not my browser default font size be suited to that?

What exactly is your question, or your problem?

The issue of setting basic font size has been discussed ad nauseam. The
correct answer is, of course, that only the user can know what is suitable
to him. Browser defaults are generally too big on the average, but that's
probably _intentional_, and surely useful. It is certainly better to use a
little too large than a little too small font.

Clueless authors who second-guess that browser vendors guessed wrong
are bound to cause damage. This is something that the vendors got _right_.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[David Dorward]

Haines Brown wrote:

I did a reinstall of my friendly browser in a different environment,
and I am surprised to find that its default for serif is Times 16 and
monospace is Courier 12.
That is very surprising.
I run a 1280 x 1024 resolution, and the text on page default appears
too large. Given my resolution, I would have expected just the
opposite. I gather that typical today is a resolution of 1024 x
768. If so, would not my browser default font size be suited to that?
Resolution says nothing about the size of text. Resolution together with
physical screen size can give you the DPI which does. However, if we are
talking points, then it becomes irrelevent again becuase points are an
absolute unit (1pt is about 1/72 of an inch). Of course the browser has to
know the DPI to correctly calculate the size of a point, so it gets thrown
out of wack again.
The text on my web pages now appears too small. The typical and
default situation seems to make my text lines almost illegible.

First you say you set the font size to 1em, then you say that the font size
the author of your browser picked is too big for you, and then without
mentioning any changes, you say that the webpage is unreadable?

--
David Dorward http://dorward.me.uk/

[Bob Osola]

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tu t.fi> wrote in
news:Xn******** *************** ******@193.229. 0.31:

Clueless authors who second-guess that browser vendors guessed wrong
are bound to cause damage. This is something that the vendors got
_right_.

Jukka, would you mind expanding on _why_ the browser vendors got this
right (IE Windows in particular). Not looking for a fight here, but I have
found myself rather persuaded by Owen Briggs' page on "Sane CSS Sizes" at

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tut...phy/index.html

Is there any reason _not_ to adopt his simple but effective solution to
this evergreen issue? For myself, I have tried going with default sizes
but have found that the very first thing users say on seeing the site is:
"Can you make the text smaller?" I'm talking Win IE users here, of course.

--
Regds, Bob Osola

[Andreas Prilop]

Haines Brown <br****@teufel. hartford-hwp.com> wrote:

I did a reinstall of my friendly browser in a different environment,
and I am surprised to find that its default for serif is Times 16 and
monospace is Courier 12.

What is "Times 16"? What is Courier 12"?

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Bob Osola wrote:

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tut...phy/index.html
Aaargh, microfonts (on my MSIE). [1]
Is there any reason _not_ to adopt his simple but effective solution
What "solution"? You can't solve a problem until you've defined what
you suppose the problem to be.

By my reckoning: discerning readers have selected an appropriate font
size for reading normal text. You don't know what it is - you don't
need to know what it is.

OK, maybe the bulk of readers have merely consented to the size that
the vendor set for them, rather than doing anything about it. So
what? I've nothing against them reading my web pages if they wish,
but I really prefer to write for discerning readers, rather than to
help prove Sturgeon's Law.
For myself, I have tried going with default sizes
but have found that the very first thing users say on seeing the site is:
"Can you make the text smaller?"
And the answer is "yes, in your browser".
I'm talking Win IE users here, of course.

See above. IE is no less susceptible to being configured to user
preferences in this regard. Well, OK: the available size steps are
somewhat limited, so you stand a greater than normal risk of lousing
things up if you, as author, attempt to interfere with a situation
that's not known to you.

Ho hum.

[1] Mozilla was saved only by the fact that I'd set a minimum
fonts size to defeat this kind of author stupidity.

[Peter Foti]

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote in message
news:Pi******** *************** ********@ppepc5 6.ph.gla.ac.uk. ..

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Bob Osola wrote:

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tut...phy/index.html

Aaargh, microfonts (on my MSIE). [1]

Alan, what do you mean "microfonts "? I tried viewing the page with MSIE and
the smallest text size, and it was still quite readable (Win NT 4, IE 6,
1280x1024 on 19" monitor).

-Peter Foti

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Bob Osola <bo******@junk. invalid> wrote:

Jukka, would you mind expanding on _why_ the browser vendors got this
right
I already did, in the part you didn't quote. To rephrase it, if the font is
somewhat larger than the user's preferred size, no big harm is done, but if
it's smaller, then the user is inconvenienced, or even troubled. So if you
make a guess for one font size than fits all, you should make it _larger_
than what you expect people to prefer on the average. The point is that
nobody is an average person, and literally billions (i.e., milliards) of
people have less than normal eyesight.
Not looking for a fight here, but I
have found myself rather persuaded by Owen Briggs' page on "Sane CSS
Sizes" at

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tut...phy/index.html

It tells the browser to use a font size that is 24 % (that is, almost a
quarter) smaller than the user-selected font size. "Sane" isn't really my
word for that.

If authors very widely used such settings, then browser vendors would have
to make the factory defaults even considerable larger to compensate for the
effect. And there could be no meaningful font size setting, since it would
be either hard-wired (hence hostile) size or a relative size, but nobody
could know whether to relate the font size to the user-selected font size or
to a dee-zigh-nerr guess that says that users get it all wrong by 24 %, or
by some other percentage. Is that what you want?

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Peter Foti]

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tu t.fi> wrote in message
news:Xn******** *************** *****@193.229.0 .31...

Not looking for a fight here, but I
have found myself rather persuaded by Owen Briggs' page on "Sane CSS
Sizes" at

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tut...phy/index.html

It tells the browser to use a font size that is 24 % (that is, almost a
quarter) smaller than the user-selected font size. "Sane" isn't really my
word for that.

I'm curious... if I set a font size to Verdana at 84%, the size is roughly
comparable to Arial at 100% when viewed with IE at the default Medium text
size. If I increase my preference to Largest, the text is still roughly the
same size. Even on Smallest, there is not that much of a difference... more
so than the Medium and Largest settings, but probably not enough to be
noticable. So my question becomes... is it ok to size a font to something
other than 100% if it looks roughly the same as some other font at 100%? My
test code is below (don't have any place to host it at the moment).

Regards,
Peter Foti

<html>
<head>
<title>Font Size Test</title>
<style type="text/css">
.v { font-family: verdana; font-size: 84%; }
.a { font-family: arial; font-size: 100%; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p class="v">
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
</p>
<p class="a">
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
</p>
</body>
</html>

[Brian]

David Dorward wrote:

Haines Brown wrote:

I did a reinstall of my friendly browser in a different environment,
and I am surprised to find that its default for serif is Times 16 and
monospace is Courier 12.

That is very surprising.

FWIW, I think that was the settings when I installed Mozilla
1.3/Win2k. (I've since thanged them several times, so, in all
honestly, I cannot be certain of this.)

--
Brian