Catartis

Pondering Monster Font Size

I have run into an interesting font sizing issue regarding people who need very large text size. It sounds like a bug caused by piggybacking AOL off of IE6 when IE is set to largest.

A student commented to me that it was uncomfortable to read pages I have setup in an extremely simple two column sort of style to be able to include a right side link sidebar. She commented that, at the large text size she uses it read like a ticker tape down the page.

I did some testing and, yes, my page and just about any page in a column setup [including Zeldman's blog, the WaSP site, etc] were uncomfortable to read if you were running in absolutely gigantic text. Some broke and overlapped in any straight text resize offered by browsers. Opera definitely handled the issue better than others with the zoom of the entire page rather than singling out the text as the only element to enlarge. Many horizontal scrolls were evident, but page layouts were left much closer to the designer's intent.

After getting a bit more information from the student, it seems she is running an older version of AOL. Seven. She also has five or six other browsers on her system but prefers using AOsmelL because she likes the way it handles Favorites. She keeps IE6 set to largest text size under the view menu. But then she heads to AOL, which picks up her IE6 settings but then seems to double the "largest" text by applying one of it's own. There is no view control in that version of the browser that she can find so she is stuck with it unless she goes back to IE and redoes her settings there.

From the description I was getting from it, it sounds like the size she is seeing would be roughly equivalent to clicking the enlarge text option 4 to 5 times above normal in Firefox, or at least 200% in Opera's zoom. [The view, though messy in Opera is handled more elegantly than the others.]

I think her situation is rather a fluke and I have had her looking at options in other browsers. She says she thinks Firefox does the best job, but still wants to use AOL. [Go figure.] Since IE does not resize fixed size fonts, it does not seem to be an issue for locked in text size on pages, but then she would be stuck with text that is not large enough to read.

The whole thing has me thinking about column layouts and people who require huge text due to visual problems. I am thinking the best policy to try to please more of the people more of the time may be a built in style swapper on column layouts. Something offering an option that deletes the columns completely, but purrrrhaps a bit more attractive than a totally unstyled page. Just a few touches.

That does not address people with javascript disabled, but it might help a larger audience.

Just musing and thinking here. I may experiment with my lesson styles over summer break when there is plenty of fiddle time [she says] and see if I can hit on a workable solution.

Try surfing around at an absolutely huge text size. Don't do it in Opera, try another browser. FF maybe? Hit some blogs and column layout pages at a size roughly double what IE would call *largest*. It's a miserable experience. But if it was my only option due to visual problems, I would probably be wading through it as well.

Back to a sunny Saturday.

Later,

Farron and That _^..^_

Posted by farron at May 1, 2004 12:44 PM