Stylesheets - OT: Symbol for font size change?

Author

OT: Symbol for font size change?

Jam Pa

2005-05-16, 7:36 pm

This is slightly off topic, but kinda on topic.

I am wondering what kind of symbol, text or icon would you use for 'smaller
font' and 'larger font' or 'decrease text size' and 'increase text size'
links on a web page?

ATM I am using 'a-' and 'A+' text links on a linkbar. I must say many seem
confused..

cheers,

JP

C A Upsdell

2005-05-16, 7:37 pm

Jam Pa wrote:
> This is slightly off topic, but kinda on topic.
>
> I am wondering what kind of symbol, text or icon would you use for 'smaller
> font' and 'larger font' or 'decrease text size' and 'increase text size'
> links on a web page?

Why would you need these? Browsers already offer mechanisms for users
to set their preferred font sizes.

Jam Pa

2005-05-16, 7:37 pm

C A Upsdell <""cupsdellXXX\"@-@-@XXXupsdell.com"> wrote in
news:NJmdnfTFtpGyCBXfRVn-gw@rogers.com:

> Jam Pa wrote:
>
> Why would you need these? Browsers already offer mechanisms for users
> to set their preferred font sizes.
>

So true.. Yeah well, I just work here, I dont make the decisions :)

Alan J. Flavell

2005-05-16, 7:37 pm

On Mon, 16 May 2005, Jam Pa wrote:

> I am wondering what kind of symbol, text or icon would you use for 'smaller
> font' and 'larger font' or 'decrease text size' and 'increase text size'
> links on a web page?

Nothing at all. That functionality is in the browser, there's no
cause to go distracting users with a functionality that only works on
a few sites.

Naturally you'll be sizing text in em units based on the user's
preferred setting, right?

Tony

2005-05-16, 7:37 pm

"C A Upsdell" <""cupsdellXXX\"@-@-@XXXupsdell.com"> wrote in message
news:NJmdnfTFtpGyCBXfRVn-gw@rogers.com...
> Jam Pa wrote:
>
> Why would you need these? Browsers already offer mechanisms for users to
> set their preferred font sizes.

But if you only want to change the font size on a particular site, and not
have to reset it when you leave the site?

David Dorward

2005-05-16, 7:37 pm

Tony wrote:

[color=darkred]
> But if you only want to change the font size on a particular site, and not
> have to reset it when you leave the site?

Why would a user prefer to view text at a different size on different sites?
Leave the font size at the user's preference in the first place (rather
then setting it to a small proportion of that preference) and you should be
fine.

--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

kchayka

2005-05-16, 7:37 pm

Tony wrote:
> "C A Upsdell" <""cupsdellXXX\"@-@-@XXXupsdell.com"> wrote in message
> news:NJmdnfTFtpGyCBXfRVn-gw@rogers.com...
>
> But if you only want to change the font size on a particular site, and not
> have to reset it when you leave the site?

A couple things you may not have considered:

1. Sites that feel the need to incorporate such "features" tend to set
font sizes in puny and/or absolute sizes. If they left body text at the
visitor's default 1em/100%, the visitor would have no need to change the
text size in the first place.

2. I've seen dozens of sites using such a "feature". In virtually every
case, the author's idea of a "large" font size and mine are no where
near each other. Even their largest size is smaller than my default.
It's quite likely the visitor would have to zoom text anyway.

So, you do all that work for what benefit? None, AFAICT.

--
Reply email address is a bottomless spam bucket.
Please reply to the group so everyone can share.

Darin McGrew

2005-05-16, 7:37 pm

Jam Pa wrote:

"C A Upsdell" <""cupsdellXXX\"@-@-@XXXupsdell.com"> wrote:[color=darkred]

Tony <someone@somewhere.not> wrote:[color=darkred]
> But if you only want to change the font size on a particular site, and not
> have to reset it when you leave the site?

Then I'd ask my browser vendor for the ability to change font sizes only
for particular sites. In practice, I find that my browser's minimum font
size takes care of sites that don't respect my default font size, and no
site-specific fixes are necessary.
--
Darin McGrew, mcgrew@stanfordalumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, darin@htmlhelp.com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"If at first you don't succeed, then plug it in and try again."

Tony

2005-05-16, 7:37 pm

"David Dorward" <dorward@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:d6ap6d$cd2$2$830fa79f@news.demon.co.uk...
> Tony wrote:
>
>
>
> Why would a user prefer to view text at a different size on different
> sites?
> Leave the font size at the user's preference in the first place (rather
> then setting it to a small proportion of that preference) and you should
> be
> fine.

Hey, I'm not even arguing it's a good idea. But you asked "why", so I
offered a possible answer :)

Maybe one site is designed with a really small base font size to begin with.
Or one that's hard to read when it's a certain size. I don't know

Andreas Prilop

2005-05-17, 7:32 pm

On Mon, 16 May 2005, Jam Pa wrote:

> Yeah well, I just work here, I dont make the decisions :)

"Ich habe nur Befehle ausgeführt."

--
Everybody expects the German Inquisition.

Jukka K. Korpela

2005-05-17, 7:32 pm

Jam Pa <anonanon@non-anon.org> wrote:

> I am wondering what kind of symbol, text or icon would you use for
> 'smaller font' and 'larger font' or 'decrease text size' and
> 'increase text size' links on a web page?

Regarding CSS, the best setting for such symbols is display: none.

But regarding the off-topic question, which would best belong to
c.i.w.a.site-design perhaps, I would suggest that _if_ you have been
forced to pollute pages with such symbols, use whatever others use.
Here bad design becomes good design by becoming common.

So what do comparable sites use - sites that are culturally close to
yours?

> ATM I am using 'a-' and 'A+' text links on a linkbar. I must say
> many seem confused..

Such symbols create the immediate confusion between case and size.
It's better to use 'a-' and 'a+' _or_ 'A-' and 'A+'. Better, use
'-a' and '+a' with magnifying-glass like appearance for '-' and '+'.
(If you end up using _text_ links, use minus sign, −, rather than
hyphen.) Such as at http://www.suomi.fi/english/

Alternatively, use appearance like the one in IE's font size button,
the one that was sadly removed from the default interface but can be
put there by a user. It as two different-size 'A' letters, partly
overlapping, with a two-way arrow under them. If you have two separate
buttons, you might use a similar idea: one with normal-size A and
bigger A and a right-pointing arrow below them, and another one with
normal-size A and smaller A and a left-pointing arrow below them.

Naturally, if the writing system is not Latin, you need to use
different characters.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/