Complex Menus

[David Morris]

Re: Complex Menus

dorayme wrote:

>

.... lots of good stuff snipped ...

It is not a simple matter because it could be seen by you, reasonably
enough, to depend on settling various questions of fact: how many
websites are there that use less than 100% for body text? How have the
world's website users responded to the variations in their Option
settings?

Your summation I think is a fair one. The question for me is where are
we in your scenario? Has the 'battle' been lost yet. And is it worth
joining (a question for me, not others who obviously feel it is). I'll
call that the "size of font" problem.

Elsewhere, it has been pointed out that setting 62.5% will cause a
browser with a minimum font size set (actually specifically FF) to
behave oddly. I'll call that the "minimum size of font problem", So I
think there several threads to follow here - and I still have some
issues to decide.

After a quick play with 100% font size (and ye gads it all broke with
out some specified size in IE) and not font sizing, it was a real mess,
so I would have to go through the process again, which I don't have time
for at the moment. I'll probably revisit this in the future after
looking around at what other and more main stream web sites are doing.
I note that one of my exemplars <http://www.abc.net.au/news/for
example seems to have about the right font size (for me) and doesn't
suffer from the "minimum size" problem, while still being size-able in IE6.

If the world I sketched before were to come about then 75% would be the
normal. The figure would have lost its meaning! 75% of what? Of some
complicated thing that has a complicated history? 75% of what it was
when browsers first were made and before website developers mucked
things up by all going their own separate ways and herds forming to
change the very standard itself?

There a lots of odd things like this in even the web world such as the
spelling of "HTTP referer" (which being a rubbish speller myself I
didn't notice until it was pointed out to me). I think we would be able
to live with that -- if we aren't already?

[dorayme]

Re: Complex Menus

In article <1213324831.886 633@angel.amnet .net.au>,
David Morris <dlmorrisDONTSP AM@netwizDONTSP AM.com.auwrote:

dorayme wrote:

... lots of good stuff snipped ...

It is not a simple matter because it could be seen by you, reasonably
enough, to depend on settling various questions of fact: how many
websites are there that use less than 100% for body text? How have the
world's website users responded to the variations in their Option
settings?

>
Your summation I think is a fair one. The question for me is where are
we in your scenario? Has the 'battle' been lost yet. And is it worth
joining (a question for me, not others who obviously feel it is). I'll
call that the "size of font" problem.
>
Elsewhere, it has been pointed out that setting 62.5% will cause a
browser ...

You will not be able to properly assess this fancy scheme about 62.5%
without a firm grasp of the simpler dilemma of whether to use 100% for
body text (and so contribute to a rational best practice scheme outlined
in my previous post) or something less to be part of a certain trend
that has grown and which threatens to devalue the standard with unknown
consequences for the future. I am not saying don't think about the 62%
scheme, but, if you don't mind me saying, I think you need to think
through the simpler problem first.

--
dorayme

[John Hosking]

Re: Complex Menus

David Morris wrote:

John Hosking wrote:

>>
>I do hope you will listen to Beauregard on this issue [that the page
>at <http://www.clagnut.com/blog/348/is undeserving of respect].
>Personally, ...

>>
>Those who *advocate* the use of this clagnut insanity would face much
>sterner punishment, including lifetime loss of Web access prvileges,
>in addition to some physical penalty for repeat offenders. One idea
>might be the forced reduction in size (to, say, 62.5%) through
>hydraulic compression of the offender's gonads.
>>
>Aiming for anything significantly less than the visitor's preferred
>text size is rude, arrogant, inefficient, and mucks up the whole Web
>as people have to constantly adapt as best they can to each individual
>site just to read the damned content comfortably.
>>
>>

Is this some sort of threat? How odd.

Hardly. And how could it be? What fantastic powers or authority do you
imagine me to have?

Odd would be to seriously believe I actually advocate torture for those
who annoy me or do things in a convoluted and unfriendly way. 'Twas but
a rant.

You've had feedback from others since I last posted, although I'm not
sure you yet see the disadvantages of drastically downsizing the body
and then upsizing individual elements to get them back up to some
still-too-small size.

Please do consider that what you see and like on _your_ screen is based
on a multitude of personal factors, including _your_ eyesight, _your_
OS, _your_ screen size, _your_ resolution, _your_ UA, _your_ distance
from the screen, _your_ artistic tastes, the last site _you_ happened to
visit, etc. You can't know what the set of personal factors for each (or
any) of your visitors are, but happily, there's a really easy, simple
solution:
body {font-size: 100%}

HTH

--
John
I think, I say I think that clagnut idea was a *joke*. A *joke* son!

[Jonathan N. Little]

Re: Complex Menus

Pavel Lepin wrote:

Beauregard T. Shagnasty <a.nony.mous@ex ample.invalidwr ote
in <g2thc9$sbh$1@r egistered.motza rella.org>:

>Pavel Lepin wrote:

>>So, to sum it up, I hate you and will you please die an
>>agonising death right now. Pretty please?

><lol! Thank you, Pavel. I don't think I would go so far
>as to advocate 'agonising death', but I'll go along with a
>large dose of itching powder in their undershorts...

>
Fair enough, I suppose. They don't kill us after all, just
cause an inordinate amount of irritation.
>

Naw, just dump them into an incredibly uncomfortable *hot* room with a
thousand doors where only one is an exit and the labels on each door is
just small enough to illegible for our "guest"...

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO

http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

[Jonathan N. Little]

Re: Complex Menus

Jonathan N. Little wrote:

Naw, just dump them into an incredibly uncomfortable *hot* room with a
thousand doors where only one is an exit and the labels on each door is
just small enough to illegible for our "guest"...
>

Oh! I forgot, now about those *other* doors? Yeah, they would just lead
back to the searing "comfort" of the room that they tried to leave...

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO

http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

[Kevin Scholl]

Re: Complex Menus

On Jun 12, 7:21 pm, David Morris
<dlmorrisDONTS. ..@netwizDONTSP AM.com.auwrote:

Kevin Scholl wrote:

On Jun 12, 9:22 am, "Beauregard T. Shagnasty"
<a.nony.m...@ex ample.invalidwr ote:

>

percentage, ems, pixels, etc. And you know what? Not one time have I
gotten any negative feedback from testers or real users. Most users
know how to resize the text in their browsers, if they have need
to ... even in IE6. I just don't think it's such a big issue. Not a
moot point by any stretch, but no so earth-shattering as some people
think.

>
And I think you have nailed it. It is the real users that count.

I wouldn't say I "nailed" anything, David. I'm simply trying to point
out that this isn't a black and white issue with a simple solution
(sorry, but saying that font-size: 100% is always the right answer,
isn't). There are a plethora of variables and approaches to take into
account.

And you'll also note that I specified QA testers in addition to "real"
users; given that their job is to report problems, they are not going
to just leave the site.

[Darin McGrew]

Re: Complex Menus

David Morris <dlmorrisDONTSP AM@netwizDONTSP AM.com.auwrote:

Ok, so what I think you are saying is that *all* web pages should be
displayed with a font size of 100%,

Yes. As Todd Fahrner once wrote, "The font size chosen by the user as a
comfortable default (1 em) provides more truly useful information about the
rendering environment than all the resolution-sniffing, window-querying,
'open-this-wide' logic you can throw at the problem."

that is, 16px?

No, 100%. That may be 16px, but it may be significantly larger or smaller
than 16px. (Mine happens to be 15px, but I've used smaller values with
lower resolution displays. And I know people for whom 16px would be
illegibly small.)

I concede that people should have the option to change a page to make
it larger (so that's what I did - I though you would appreciate that).

Yes, it's nice for users to be able to correct your inappropriate font
sizes. But it's better if they don't have to correct anything in the first
place.
--
Darin McGrew, mcgrew@stanford alumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, darin@htmlhelp. com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"Nice is different than good." - Sondheim (LRRH, "Into the Woods")

[Felix Miata]

Re: Complex Menus

On 2008/06/13 08:53 (GMT+0800) David Morris apparently typed:

Bergamot wrote:

http://www.bergamotus.ws/misc/sensib...xt-sizing.html

Ok I had a read of this, and I can see that you have a point with
Minimum Font size in FireFox - finally something I can actually see!
(For the first time here - everything else has just looked like an
emotional sound off, relatively devoid of content -- I am totally
unimpressed by "I know more than you, so do it my way sorts of arguments").

http://fm.no-ip.com/SS/Clagnut/bbcnSS.html has an earlier origin and uses far
fewer words, allowing screenshots to do most of the speaking.

Note that as of Firefox 3, the problem is gone except as to Opera users. As
in Safari, in FF3 the minimum is applied only to sizes that would otherwise
be rendered below the minimum, leaving already minimum or larger sizes
unimpacted by the minimum setting.

I now need to decide how many users have a minimum font size set high
enough for it to be a problem versus the more general it looks better
with smaller than 100% font size.

No you don't. The numbers are non-zero, which are as close to known as could
possibly matter. The numbers don't matter one iota. To think it matters is to
ignore and thus disrespect your visitors' previously determined optimums.
Every instance of non-100% text sizing on main content is a statement of
disrespect, telling your visitors you know better and/or they screwed up.
It's absurd. You can't know whether they screwed up or not, and you can't
know better what works best for them. Can't. Impossible.

BTW, I found Jakob Nielsen's font
selection too large (was he going for irony here?) and actually changed
it to smaller to make it more readable (which in my day to day browsing
I generally don't have to do).

Nielsen uses 100% sizing. If text on his site viewed in your own browser is
too large for you, almost certainly you screwed up in your own selection of
your browser's default size setting. It's your job to adjust your own
browser's behavior, not to mess with everyone elses' browsers (via non-100%
CSS content text). We already got it right. Any assumption to the contrary is
pure disrespect, aka rude.

On Nielsen's site most text is too small for me, even though my default size
is correctly set. The reason is his average content lines are too many words
long for my preferred window width. Lines that long need either a larger text
size, or a width constraint, to attain comfort while reading. Luckily, it
takes only a second to narrow the browser window to provide the required
constraint. Unfortunately, the converse is not possible. Lines too short due
to arbitrary width contraints set based upon arbitrarily small assumed text
sizes cannot be widened by widening the browser window.

Is this font size issue a swimming against the tide argument in the same
way I rail against the use of Javascript?

Once upon a time virtually everyone used low resolution (low DPI) displays.
In all the many years since, browser defaults have not budged, while
resolutions and DPI have been steadily climbing. It used to be, when DPI was
universally low, that 16px and nominal 12pt really were really really big. A
nominal 12pt was typically in the 14pt-18pt actual size range. So, deeziners
really couldn't fit very much in the available space using text in default size.

But, that's ancient history that the vast majority of web deeziners haven't
yet abandoned as a design fundament, leaving far too many web users
needlessly finding most pages give them eyestrain and backaches trying to
read, only because those deeziners are too lazy or clueless or just downright
rude.

Related reading:

http://www.dev-archive.net/articles/font-analogy.html

http://fm.no-ip.com/auth/bigdefaults.html

http://tobyinkster.co.uk/article/web-fonts/

http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html

http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/legible/

http://www.informationarchitects.jp/100e2r?v=4

--
"Where were you when I laid the earth's
foudation?" Matthew 7:12 NIV

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

[Felix Miata]

Re: Complex Menus

On 2008/06/12 08:24 (GMT-0700) Kevin Scholl apparently typed:

I truly do not believe there is a clear "wrong" or "right".

Repect is always right. Disrespect is always wrong. Disregarding my
preference (px or pt main content sizing) and adjusting my preference
(relative, but non-100% main content sizing) are always disrespect. Always.
--
"Where were you when I laid the earth's
foudation?" Matthew 7:12 NIV

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

[Felix Miata]

Re: Complex Menus

On 2008/06/13 07:21 (GMT+0800) David Morris apparently typed:

It is the real users that count.

Exactly, and they should need do no more than arrive and read. If they X the
tab or hit the back button before they assimilate your message, you screwed up.
--
"Where were you when I laid the earth's
foudation?" Matthew 7:12 NIV

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

[Bergamot]

Re: Complex Menus


Felix Miata wrote:

On 2008/06/13 08:53 (GMT+0800) David Morris apparently typed:

>Bergamot wrote:

>

> http://www.bergamotus.ws/misc/sensib...xt-sizing.html

>
Note that as of Firefox 3, the problem is gone except as to Opera users.

FYI, the problem will still exist for those with a user stylesheet
having body {font-size:100% !important}

And that could be any browser.

--
Berg