On 2009/07/07 21:05 (GMT+0100) Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis composed: > On 7/7/09 04:19, Felix Miata wrote:
> > To suppose "Frozen" means anything other than frozen undersize would > > be a difficult supposition to support, as one need only peruse the web > > to see how rare frozen at or larger than default can be found. Thus, > > disrespectful (smaller than default) font sizes were and _are_ the #1 > > (foundational) problem, with other font issues lagging. ... > I'm uncomfortable with your equation of "common" with "foundational". I'm not sure I see such an equation. Nevertheless, on web pages where text is the content, legibility should be job one. Without large enough text, legibility is impossible regardless what other factors are involved. Too small is too small, something that raising contrast or increasing leading cannot ever fix. > > Safest presumption of choice, very much yes. > > Any other presumption, which is what use of non-defaults makes, is a > > poor foundation on which to build in usability and/or accessibility. > I think it's safer to build usability and accessibility on reality > rather than "presumptions". Most web site designs incorporate presumptions. Designers are neither normal users, nor are they sitting over the shoulders of visitors to see what their settings are or how they are reacting to what they find. So, the designer cannot know what those settings are, or more importantly, that any deviation from 100% acceptance of those settings can provide a better experience for the majority of visitors. The reality is that a body font-size rule other than 100%/1em/medium is a presumption that the user default is supra-optimal and can be improved upon by the designer by reducing overall text size. > > This "claim 1" is addressed by the major point of Inkster article. > On the contrary, Toby argues from the position that users defaults might > not match their preferences. Yes, certainly for some portion of the universe that must follow. But, the point he makes is it's more likely than not that a designer adjustment will produce a negative result. > >> Claim 2: Acceptance of publisher font size suggestions is not a valid > >> "user choice". > > I'm not sure I understand your claim. If you assume an actual user > > setting is not a valid choice, > No. I'm saying the actual user setting is an entirely valid choice and > means something different than what you assume it does. The "default" > font setting is explicitly the font size to use when the publisher > happens not to suggest a font size. The user setting means "Please use > the publisher's suggested font size. If they fail to suggest a font > size, please use X" not "Please use this font size for body text on all > webpages, I don't see how you can read "please" into it. When publisher uses px or pt or mm or cm he's totally disregarding whatever my preference might be, while having no actual knowledge what sizes his so-called suggestions produce. When he's using some arbitrary fraction of my choice, he still doesn't know the actual result but merely the bias he created. Either way, to think the user is asking with a "please" is just ludicrous. > although I understand most webpages will override this with > itsy font size suggestions". > As evidence, consider the help text for these features: ... And what do their help sections on minimum and text zoom and page zoom have to say? > > Most are personal computers. By definition they come with > > personalizability built in. The vendors have provided for the > > clueless, and everyone else, usable defaults. Authors should defer > > to the clueful, not the clueless. Doing otherwise is an affirmative > > designer choice for chaos outside their own microcosms. The clueless > > who are overwhelmed by their cluelessness can generally acquire clues. > I think it's dangerous to ignore "clueless" users when building for > usability and accessibility since: Deferring and ignoring are not the same thing. You don't know that the clueless actually need help, or that your actions provide it. > 1. The majority of users seem pretty "clueless". Where are the stats to prove it? > 2. Cognitive disabilities could contribute to effective computer > "cluelessness". And? > Also, given that setting default font sizes does not make body text that > size on much, if not most, of the web, I'd expect "clueful" users who > wanted that size to set a minimum size, reject publisher font size > suggestions, or reject publisher style suggestions entire. The clueful do choose in different ways. Minimums tend to cause text to overlap or disappear because the designs don't accommodate size deviation from the publisher preference. Blanket rejection generally causes all sorts of other problems. Try it yourself on some typical overpopulated pages and see how easy or difficult it is to actually find objects on. Modern pages are full of contextual content that amounts to haystacks hiding needles. So, these defenses, as most defenses, have drawbacks, which may or may not be acceptable, regardless of cluelevel. > > What I'm saying is the designer should build the perspectives without > > a dependence on absolute size. > Dependence on a given size and actually setting or not setting a font > size are orthogonal. Hardly. Most sites designed using px & pt & non-100% em break (less accessible and/or less usable) when some level of user defense is applied because those designs depend on the size set by the publisher. In contrast, designing using the default size as a foundation offers resolution independence. The user can choose any sane physical window and default font size and the page won't become less accessible or easy to use. > > Instead of dependence on absolute size, it should acclimate to the > > size given via default, and when particulars of the design impose what > > would otherwise be reductions to accessibility/usability, such as > > lower contrast via background images or colors, to _raise_ text size > > from default to compensate. > Do you mean that when designers suggest low-contrast colors, they should > suggest a higher font size to compensate? Yes. > If so, I think this deviation > from the previously stated principle of "respecting users' font size > choices by incorporating them at 100% for the bulk of content" is a wise > one. > > To presume they are bad at this point is just not reasonable. > Given their chaotic evolution and the changes in technology and the > studies of legibility and usability since their inception, I think it's > reasonable to question whether they are good or bad, rather than > "presume" either. Studies were made long ago. Preferences of the study participants confirmed that they were good. Their long history, and expectations, provide a huge hurdle to overcome for any attempting to change them. > > Minimum is a defense. > Minimum is a preference. The defensive preference is both boolean (whether to unconditionally accept the publisher's so-called suggestions) and, if true, measure (how small is acceptable). > > I think it reasonable to assume users will maintain window sizes > > sufficient to support reasonably accommodating content. That is, those > > who need or prefer large text will maintain larger windows than those > > who prefer small and narrow or wide will be with regard to how many > > characters fit in the available width. > This doesn't sound like a safe assumption to me. What alternative can you offer? > Maybe a lot of users > use the biggest possible viewport, regardless of font size preferences. This for any of them would be a problem why? > Maybe a lot of users using much larger fonts will also need more space > on their desktop for chrome for text-to-speech or magnification aids. Maybe. Maybe those aids don't use screen real estate, or use floating windows that stay away from interfering with point of focus. Can you seriously justify giving them more space by shrinking your page's legibility? IOW, how can you decide for them that smaller is better for them? Those that need the truly giant fonts are probably resolved to use alternate UA technologies. > > Horizontal scrolling should thus be needed only for exceptional mixes > > of window and font sizes. > Yes. "em" sizing is no magic bullet. It's imperfect, but nevertheless very good once print design and px sizing are unlearned, and certainly better for real users than Photoshop'd px-sized designs. > >> Once you start down the road of saying a given publisher > >> style suggestion is an offence against user choice, it's hard not to > >> conclude that the only legitimate role for publisher styles would be > >> layout hints for semantics that don't exist in (X)HTML (for example, > >> alignment for table columns with different data types). > > I don't see that as a necessary result. > /That/ is what I cannot understand about your position. > You appear to be saying publisher body text font-size suggestions are > bad because: > 1. Overriding user choice is bad. It's necessarily presumptuous (you're not there, and so can't know), imposing, and rude. You can't do globally better. > 2. The default font size set in the browser constitutes a user choice > for body text to use that font size. Not to accept that premise by substituting some alternative is rude and chaotic. You can have no reasonable expectation to accomplish global improvement. > 3. Publisher body text font-size suggestions override default font size. > Therefore: > 4. Publisher font-size suggestions override a user choice. > Therefore: > 5. Publisher font-size suggestions are bad. Not all. Contextual sizing is expected and acceptable. Prime content (body/base) undersizing is not acceptable. Prime content oversizing as _compensation_ for publisher legibility reduction produced via color and typeface is necessary as long as legibility and accessibility are important. > While I think Premise 2 is erroneous, the argument doesn't change if you > substitute "color" and "typeface" for "font size". It looks logically > inconsistent to make the argument in the case of font size but not color > and typeface. Changing color almost without exception cannot but reduce legibility on properly operating and adjusted displays. Changing typeface is the most complicated of those three factors. It's safest to specify non-default typefaces for contextual ends. If you set Verdana as first choice combined with a size reduction from default to keep Verdana from "looking too big", then those with Verdana or some similarly "large" typeface set as default, and those with no Verdana and no similarly "large" fallback, suffer legibility reduction. Size remains the foundation. Because too small a foundation will not support the weight of legibility regardless of typeface and colors, the latter are just dictum when the size is too small, which is not to say don't ever touch them. Contextual deviations can and do have proper places. > How frequently font size suggestions cause legibility problems compared > to color and typeface suggestions - and even on the evidence you > presented color contrast is a common problem (a third of respondents > complaining about it!) - is irrelevant to the principles at stake. > How do you justify potentially reducing the legibility of content by > overriding the colors and typefaces Joe Bloggs has chosen to leave at > the defaults chosen by his browser manufacturer because they help him > read, merely to satisfy your sense of aesthetics or because you think > you know better about legibility for Joe than Joe and his browser vendor? Normally I won't reduce legibility of prime content materially via typeface or colors. When it does happen, I normally compensate, typically via text size increase. I think that's the right approach for every designer whose top priorities include accessibility and usability. -- No Jesus - No peace , Know Jesus - Know Peace Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *******************************************************************
