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

[Christoph Paeper]

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

I can't see that too small a font is any more troubling in any meaningful
way than an over-large one. Both can make customers equally unhappy.
There are people who can't read texts in small font-sizes. There are however
*much* less people who have reading problems with large fonts.
For myself - on the rare occasions that I use IE - I recoil from
its default large fonts as one would from bright car headlamps.
Ever considered to adjust them?
My customers seem to react likewise, judging by how quickly they email or
phone me up to complain about my occasional attempts at writing non-font-
size-fiddled pages for an IE audience.
Tell them that it's a legal requirement. Although that is not true except in
very few countries maybe, it is helpful.
I was looking for solid technical reasons why the Briggs technique might
be wrong or invalid in some way. Looks like it's just a personal opinion
type of issue after all.

It's an accessibility type of issue.
On the Noodle Incident page I hit '+' by reflex three times to increase the
zoom to 130%. I could have read it otherwise, too, but not conveniently.
That should of course not be taken as an excuse for decreasing font-size,
like "Advanced users know how to increase the size, so it's okay to lower it
for unadvanced ones."

--
Useless Fact #4:
Coca Cola was originally green.

[Haines Brown]

kchayka <kc*********@si hope.com> writes:

Haines Brown wrote:

It was my assumption that when you increase monitor resolution,
windows get smaller, and with them the size of text they
contain. It would be possible, then, to incease resolution to the
point that the text becomes too small to read. Where do I err
here?

I don't think you've erred, you just didn't carry this far enough.
While it is true that text gets increasingly smaller, there are
different ways to compensate for higher resolutions and keep text
comfortably readable.

The discussion often comes back the same thing. While the goal in
principle is to have the user define a document's format, in practice,
we need to anticipate what the typical user wants and try to offer him
that. That the end user _can_ and sometimes _should_ redefine a
document's format does not mean the document producers escape making
choices affecting format. We have to set something, and it seems
important to employ guidelines that make these decisions wise ones.

For example, I've worked as a simple typist in an office environment,
and it was made very clear that we were not supposed to customize our
(Windows) desktops. So questions such as font style, family, size,
etc. were in fact decided by a documents' producer and by IE's default
settings. True, we define function, not format, but we know what the
practical effect on format of our functional assignments.

My original question had to do with the real situation I faced, and
I'm sorry it resulted in a debate over principles, upon which probably
everyone agrees to begin with. The default serif font in my browser is
16, which seems large; my documents use font-size 1 em;. So why my
text size 16? (I realize the thrust of the thread was that I've be
better off using 100% instead of 1 em, but that's not the issue).

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

[Brian]

Peter Foti wrote:

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

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/typography/
Aaargh, microfonts (on my MSIE). [1]

Alan, what do you mean "microfonts "?

The fonts were small. They were for me, too. In fact, the first
thing I did when I loaded the page was hit <ctrl +> to reverse the
author's "sane" [cough] css. Uh, ok, that was the second thing I did.
The first was to ask myself, "why does the author think he knows
better than I what font-size I prefer? Idiot."
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).

I could give you my specs, I suppose, but I'm not sure what they'll
add to the thread.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Christoph Paeper]

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

The default serif font in my browser is 16,
Points, I presume. Or pixels?
which seems large;
May be. I do use 16px text as default in my browser.
my documents use font-size 1 em;. So why my text size 16?

Er, 1em or 100% of 16px (or 16pt) is 16px (16pt). What else did you expect?

--
Useless Fact #1:
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33 [99-58-84].

[Nick Kew]

In article <Xn************ *************** **@193.229.0.31 >, one of infinite monkeys
at the keyboard of "Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:

to him. Browser defaults are generally too big on the average, but that's
That seems to originate with M$ setting huge default sizes, perhaps to
try and balkanize the web and reduce interoperabilit y.
probably _intentional_, and surely useful. It is certainly better to use a
little too large than a little too small font.
I'd disagree that any such thing is useful.

On my desktop, I set a default text size that appears in terminal windows,
text editors, my newsreader, etc. Can anyone explain why a web browser
should default to any other size?
Clueless authors who second-guess that browser vendors guessed wrong
are bound to cause damage.
Agreed.
This is something that the vendors got _right_.

- subject to an interesting definition of "right" in some cases.

--
Nick Kew

In urgent need of paying work - see http://www.webthing.com/~nick/cv.html

[Nick Kew]

In article <87************ @teufel.hartfor d-hwp.com>, one of infinite monkeys
at the keyboard of Haines Brown <br****@teufel. hartford-hwp.com> wrote:

My problem is that my "1 em" seems smaller than the "80%". This is
what I don't understand.

I would infer one or more of:
* there's something you haven't told us
* a browser bug

--
Nick Kew

In urgent need of paying work - see http://www.webthing.com/~nick/cv.html

[Eric Jarvis]

Haines Brown wrote:

My original question had to do with the real situation I faced, and
I'm sorry it resulted in a debate over principles, upon which probably
everyone agrees to begin with. The default serif font in my browser is
16, which seems large; my documents use font-size 1 em;. So why my
text size 16? (I realize the thrust of the thread was that I've be
better off using 100% instead of 1 em, but that's not the issue).

default font sizes tend to be large because if they are larger than you'd
like you can easily adjust them...if they are too small for you to read
them you are screwed, you won't be able to read the instructions on how to
adjust the default size

--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
all these years I've waited for the revolution
and all we end up getting is spin

[Jukka K. Korpela]

ni**@fenris.web thing.com (Nick Kew) wrote:

probably _intentional_, and surely useful. It is certainly better to
use a little too large than a little too small font.
I'd disagree that any such thing is useful.

When you have to select an initial basic font size, and a browser vendor has
to, then it is quite reasonable to prefer readability to esthetics. You
_know_ that whatever size you select, it will be non-optimal for a huge
number of people. Actually, it will be optimal for a minority only, anyway.
So the question is how to minimize the damage, and a person whose ability to
read the text is reduced should weigh more than a person who just finds the
text a bit too large to his taste
On my desktop, I set a default text size that appears in terminal
windows, text editors, my newsreader, etc. Can anyone explain why a web
browser should default to any other size?

Well, _that_ is a different thing. Of course if there is some font size that
should be regarded as being chosen by the user, a Web browser should use it
as the initial basic font size. But this just moves the issue to a different
level. And if the factory settings make the basic font size in a system too
small, why shouldn't a Web browser be a little more user-friendly?

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

[Stephen Poley]

On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 01:53:12 +0100, Christoph Paeper
<cr***********@ gmx.net> wrote:

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

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

"Can you make the text smaller?"

And the answer is "yes, in your browser".

Fair point. But not one that my very non-tech customers want to have to
bother with.

Must be the same kind of people that doesn't adjust the rear mirrors in
their cars.

<grin>

It's a strange one, this. I can easily believe that there are a fair few
people who don't know that they can adjust the text size in their
browser. I can believe that some of those find their default size too
large. But can it really be true, as many web authors seem to think,
that the latter group makes up the vast majority of web readers?

I receive quite a lot of Word documents from a wide variety of sources,
including people with no technical knowledge. And those documents
*hardly ever* have the default text size - either the font has been
adjusted, or the zoom, or both.

Now I know that Word users don't map 1-to-1 onto Web readers. But if the
vast majority of Word users know how to adjust their text size - and
prove it by actually doing so - can it really be true that the vast
majority of Web readers do not know how to?

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/

[Graham J]

> Now I know that Word users don't map 1-to-1 onto Web readers. But if
the

vast majority of Word users know how to adjust their text size - and
prove it by actually doing so - can it really be true that the vast
majority of Web readers do not know how to?

I can well believe that there are many readers who don't know it is
possible because their browser doesn't make it obvious that it is
possible. For example Internet Explorer, with its large market share,
hides it under View | Text Size. Many of us might not consider that
particularly hidden but it certainly isn't as prominent as having
buttons to do it. Firebird has one less level of menu but you still
need to look and Opera goes for the zoom option but still hidden away.

The second issue is that because authors do have this tendency to play
around with the font sizes the reader may really need to adjust the
font sizes on a per site basis and selecting from menus quickly
becomes tedious. Keyboard shortcuts as in Firebird or Opera can help
once you become used to using them but it is a habit you need to
develop over time.

What is needed is for the capability to increase and decrease font
size to be much more prominent with 'larger', 'smaller' and 'give me
back my default' buttons and ideally also the ability to remember the
font settings on a per site basis should it be so desired.

Ideally it should also be possible to have the adjustments only be
temporary - perhaps for the site you are on - so you then have your
own choice of default size that applies to each new site you come to.
You shouldn't be affected by changes you had to made for another site.