Re: Relative Units for Font Size Scaling W3C requirement replaced by zoom techniques in new Browsers?

This would be a question for WCAG, but I don't know if they have changed their 7-year habit of not answering such questions.

Anyway, in technical terms, the rationale for this is less now that other browsers have started picking up the idea of a useful zoom. But it is still there in the sense that if you follow it, users can readily make their own styles for simple things, such as setting a minimum font size and having it work. While it is possible for browsers to guess at the various measures that need to be adapted to change the presentation of a page where the user sets minimum font-size at 18px while the page assumes a size of 10px (the "obvious" solution of finding that out and zooming the page to 180% is neither as obvious, nor actually as useful, as it intuitively seems), maintaining this requirement means that authors are required to naturally design for zoom, text zoom, and other adaptations, instead of increasing the complexity.

Particularly on TV or mobile devices, the range of possible presentations still requires some relatively complex adaptations, and sites designed to adapt are generally easier to produce in a form that suits users if they are designed with a liquid layout.

cheers

Chaals

On Wed, 23 May 2007 17:04:36 +0200, Aaron M Leventhal <aleventh@us.ibm.com> wrote:

> Stefan,
>
> That feature is planned for Firefox 3.

> "Schnabel, Stefan" <stefan.schnabel@sap.com>
> 05/23/2007 08:59 AM

> Michael,
> I would like to know if the presence of new step-less zooming abilities
> (e.g. PageZoom in IE7) will make some of the W3C requirements for font
> scaling (like using relative instead of absolute units on web pages)
> become obsolete.
> If not, if any complaints, please explain or point me to some location
> where I can find arguments against built-in zooming techniques in
> browsers.
> We need your input here to give our html-based technologies a definitive
> answer if they must use relative units or if they can rely on IE7 for font
> scaling.
> Aaron,
> I would like to know if something comparable to PageZoom in IE7 is planned
> for FireFox 3.



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  Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
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Received on Wednesday, 23 May 2007 22:40:49 UTC