additions… #37
…web design…
font size matters as much as ever…
As more and more browsers adapt Opera's “full page zoom” feature, some web designers contemplate ignoring the entire issue of “relative font-sizes, font resizing, and testing beyond defaults”, and rely on this “full page zoom” feature to save their work. Well, foolishness comes in all shapes and sizes, so I'm not surprised that some want to show their ignorance and/or disrespect for visitors this way.
As a web surfer I can't say it bothers me what web designers do in this respect. Already so many sites that look broken when I come around with Opera. Oh, they look equally broken in Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer, so it certainly isn't Opera's fault. Whether the web designers/front-end coders in charge show off their pure ignorance or their total disrespect for visitors, is sometimes unclear. The result however is the same – failure – so making the distinction isn't important.
The key point is that web documents must work reasonably well for visitors in order for the designer to claim some form of success. If designers need guidance to see what “must work reasonably well for visitors” means, they can absorb the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and try to apply all relevant points, in addition to some common sense, to their own creations.
Whether the visitor “likes” what he or she is served, or not, has no relevance here. Personal taste for every potential visitor is simply too wide a range to cover.
Similarly: whether the designer “likes” the end-result when a web document is subjected to regular browser features and/or options, is irrelevant. Once the document is released it is up to the visitor how they access and use it, and, broken or not: it just has to work reasonably well.
absolutely nothing has changed…
I have used Opera for years with “full page adaptive zoom” feature and all, and don't zoom pages very often – I set “minimum font size” so I won't have to. Of course, just as with “full page zoom”, some browsers have had the “minimum font size” or similar options for a very long time, so nothing new here.
Take a look at the table below to see what main features and options the major browsers offer today. Absolutely nothing has changed that warrants changes in how web designers should go about styling and testing how text flows in web documents. Web designers and front-end coders either do it right and test that it works reasonably well, or they design for failure.
| IE/win | Firefox | Safari | Opera | Konqueror |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| page zoom (IE7+) adaptive zoom (IE8) |
adaptive zoom (Fx3+) | adaptive zoom (Saf4+) | the original adaptive zoom (Op2+) | page zoom (sort of) |
| text size | text size | text size | user styles [1] | text size |
| ignore font size | min font size | min font size | min font size | min font size |
[1] Note that nearly all browsers can be set to use its own font-size and other defaults instead of the author's, so one can never know what font-size a document is rendered in at the user-end. The same goes for font-family, so relying on the size of a certain font while authoring is not a good idea.
The best features in latest Firefox, Internet Explorer, Konqueror and Safari versions is that one can choose whether to zoom the entire page or only the text. I've always missed such a feature in Opera, despite its “minimum font size” option and excellent “adaptive page zoom.”
Apart from Opera; most browsers don't zoom pages all that well – at least not yet, and images with fine details may end up looking distorted. Text resizing works well in all of them though, with only minor variations depending on Operating System and settings.
As more browsers come around with a working “full page zoom” feature, I hope web designers don't ever start relying on visitors using this feature. In my opinion: relying an a browser-feature while designing will cause as many failures in the future as it has in the past.
Browser features are for visitor to use as they choose, and not for web designers to rely on or ignore. If some browser features don't work more or less as intended because the designer has crippled them or ignored their existence, then the designer is at fault.
don't show disrespect…
Web designers and front-end coders should show some respect for visitors – all visitors. They should at least make serious attempts on getting their own designs to work reasonably well for as many visitors as possible. If web designers and front-end coders don't know how to do that, then they should either learn … or find other jobs.
For every method that works, there are dozens, in many cases hundreds, that don't work.
Combine methods, and the process leading to well-working end-products obviously becomes more complex and harder.
Web design has always consisted of numerous methods combined to become a whole, and the ones responsible for
the end-products better choose wisely and know what they're dealing with, starting long before they sign
off anything.
Sure, web designers and front-end coders can't create and build for what one may call “perfect results” in every possible scenario, and some browsers are just too broken to be saved at the design-end. However, for professionals to declare that they won't even try to make things work beyond defaults and limited browser-features, makes the term “professional web designer” take on the meaning: “determined to fail.”
There's always a gray area when it comes to what people say compared to what they do, which means I won't go into who said what and where before I see what they actually do. If someone wants to scale down their level of knowledge and act accordingly, then that's their prerogative. I definitely won't follow their lead.
If someone just want to use big and bold words in order to make headlines and win arguments, and never intended to follow up on it in practice, then that's just stupid since it may mislead others. There's enough misleading nonsense out here already – especially about font-sizing methods.
I'm not the least interested in winning arguments anywhere, only in knowing how things work and how best to make use of that knowledge for myself as well as for others. I do not intend to get side-tracked by stupidity and/or ignorance while in this never-ending process, and I hope others won't either.
sincerely 
Hageland 16.nov.2008
06.dec.2008 - revised language.
07.feb.2009 - added "adaptive zoom" in table and elsewhere, with links.
03.mar.2009 - added "adaptive zoom" for Safari 4+ in table.
20.mar.2009 - updated table with latest "adaptive zoom" spread across browser-land.
last rev: 20.mar.2009
additions…
