Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Root
I'm asking this question to help me design my own web pages.
BAUT sets the font size to something smaller than the browser's
default "medium" size. Google search results and Google Groups,
among many others, also use a font size smaller than the browser
default. I have no problem with that, but can anyone explain
why it is done, and why I haven't seen any complaints about it
from the HTML police? They always said to let the user decide
what font size to use. I'm wondering: If BAUT and Google can
get away with controlling the font size, why shouldn't I do the
same on my own pages?
I don't want to control it as tightly as BAUT does, though:
BAUT doesn't let users change the size of most text at all!
Why? I would simply change the base size, and the user could
still adjust the actual displayed size as needed.
-- Jeff, in Minneapolis
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First of all, the BAUT forum uses "canned" board software called vbulletin that is also used by many other forums, and they all look pretty similar, so I suspect that admins don't have a lot of control over the user interface.
Your instincts are correct in that the user ought to have some control over the web page appearance, especially for font sizes. I don't know which HTML police you drink coffee with, but the ones on some of the web authoring usenet groups are quite vocal on this point.
I haven't looked at code for vbulletin, so I suspect that the text is sized in px units, which makes it difficult for IE users to resize the text. Some people would consider this a serious accessibility problem. Fortunately, Firefox and Opera (and probably some others) do allow users to resize text no matter how the size is specified. Moreover, Firefox (at least) also allows the user to specify a minimum font size.
If you want all users (including IE users) to have control, don't use px units but rather em or % units to suggest size. Many people (including myself) also recommend using the default (1 em or 100%, or even not specifying it at all) for the main body text.
Nick