In article <67*************@mid.individual.net>,
Bergamot <be******@visi.comwrote:
Patricia Aldoraz wrote:
On Apr 20, 10:34 am, "David E. Ross" <nob...@nowhere.notwrote:
In general, use of a, A, A+ on a Web page gives really bad results
Why is it any worse - in general - than a user changing the size of
his text himself?
Because *no* web author has *any* clue as to what the user considers
small, medium or large type. The choices provided by such clueless
authors are invariably inadequate for the job.
Patricia, don't get tangled up in the choices for the terms of the
debate foisted on you by others. And don't be fooled by words that load
up the case against with certain assumptions indicated by the free use
of the derogatory "clueless".
Who cares about some "small, medium, and large standard" if what you
want to do it give folk who get a bit tired an easy way to make their
text bigger by a few common sense percent. Who cares if it is not
exactly according to some scale that is supposed to be written in stone.
Last time I looked, I could not see a way of varying to my heart's
content some browsers built in increment text size controls. That does
not make it useless. Quite often, one click makes the difference for me.
So you can assume that one press of an A+ in your envisaged php control
will also work nicely for many people. You can make the A+ to be
equivalent to 1.5 clicks up or 2 clicks up to be sure of *making a
difference* and that will make life easier for some elderly folk. You
are meaning that clicking will take the page to a style sheet which is
different at least in respect to the size of the font? And, as Ben C
points out, this is an opportunity to change anything else that may be
relevant to someone who is clearly not eagle-eyed.
This is not a case of nothing is better than something. Such a control
does not remove the normal browser control, it is an extra.
There is a serious alternative that is sometimes suggested to such
author given text control: show the user how to use the browser
controls. But this has drawbacks of its own. First there are different
types of controls, text size upping and downing v. zooming; different
browsers have different ways. It is not obvious that it would be easier
to get into some educative spiel on this. And, of course, spiels are
often not read!
--
dorayme
