RE: Font Sizes

I couldn’t agree more.  This is one of the most widely misunderstood
‘best practise’ design techniques, so to explain why it should be
applied is compelling.
 
Paul
 <http://www.segalamtest.com/> Segala M Test
 
-----Original Message-----
From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Nicolas Combelles
Sent: 28 October 2005 15:42
To: public-bpwg@w3.org
Subject: RE: Font Sizes
 
The debate about "liquid" vs "fixed" design is mainly one of
accessibility and adaptability vs design control.
 
As Amanda pointed very well, the problem is that most people use fixed
design by lack of knowledge. Sometime fixed design can be a graphical
choice at the cost of accessibility, but you may assume this depending
on your goals. On mobile however, I don't see such need to absolutely
keep control on font-size as you often don't have it anyway.
 
On margin or border .. that's another story as not adapting relatively
often do not break readability and allow you to keep control over your
main devices target. But if you keep pixels, you must know the risks.
 
So I totally agree with Amanda about the font-size property and about
highlighting the disadvantage of using fixed units in general.
 
I think there is a very good article about it on "A list apart".
 
 
Regards,
Nicolas Combelles
 
 
  _____  

De : public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] De
la part de Andrea Trasatti
Envoyé : vendredi 28 octobre 2005 15:59
À : public-bpwg@w3.org
Objet : Re: Font Sizes
On 10/27/05, Amanda.Song@nokia.com <Amanda.Song@nokia.com> wrote: 

Hello Best Practices Working Group,

I read the Mobile Web Best practices document and under the topic of 
Measurements, you mention that people should use relative units, but I
think it is important to mention explicitly the problems with using
pixel units. I would like to steer web site developers away from using
pixels as a form of measurement AT ALL, whether that be font size,
border size, margins, padding, etc.  For example, with our new high
resolution devices, a 12 pixel font is unreadable.  This requires us to
calculate the screen resolution, then apply a special multiplier in 
order for the font to be legible.  I don't really think that this is
what the web site developer wants or intends for us to have to do in
order to properly render their site.

Hello Amanda,
    what if the site owner WANTED the font to be 12 pixels? Are you
saying that you make it bigger regardless of what the author wanted?

This is exactly what generates (generated) device diversity! 

I agree with the idea of using relative sizes, but I am sorry to say
that I'm not quite happy with your choice of making the font bigger.
The only other thing I would mention here has to do with images. With
higher resolution devices, the size of the image also is reduced, so 
that might be something that the web developer should keep in mind as
well.  I am not sure the following statement is true: "An exception to
this being where an image has been specifically sized for a display, 
references to the image in markup may specify the exact dimensions of
the image in order to help the browser to flow the page, and avoid
re-flowing it after the page has been retrieved. "  I would ask "Which 
display?".  My high resolution Nokia device, my low resolution Nokia
device, or my desktop?  The bottom line here is that pages should be
developed in a resolution independent way.

Maybe we should rephrase it?
What is meant is that if the site recognizes the device (the one the
user is using to browse) and has a content adaptation software that
automatically resizes the image to fit the screen "perfectly" then the
software might use the exact image width and height to make the
browser's life easier.

-- 

Andrea Trasatti
atrasatti@gmail.com
Personal Blog: http://trasatti.blogspot.com