Default font size in gnome

[Felix Miata]

On 2009/02/27 10:47 (GMT-0600) Ryan Hayle composed:

> On 27/02/09 10:09, Chris Cheney wrote:

>> Fortunately most web designers are smart enough not to use px for fonts.

I'm not so sure it's reached 50% yet, particularly for shopping carts. For
those that have changed away, most have not switched to respecting defaults.
The most popular trend is to impose predominatly 12px by setting 'body
{font-size: 62.5%}' (5/8 of 12pt, which is 10px @ 96 DPI, 7.5pt) and then 'p
{font-size: 1.2em}' (120% of 10px == 12px). http://clagnut.com/blog/348/
explains the convolution. Others typically size copy text to .76em, 80%, or
thereabouts.

> Have you tried to browse the web much with Firefox set to a high DPI?  
> Maybe it's just way more noticeable for me at 150dpi, but at least half 
> the sites I visit look terrible!  There are still plenty of clueless web 
> designers out there!

Probably most. I subscribe a bunch of designer mailing lists. It's hard to
get most of them to understand the impact on users of pixel density
variation. They still want pixel perfection in most cases. Even when they
respect font defaults, they still size other elements in px, leaving an
abundance of resulting breakage when users' local settings and other
environmental variations don't match the designers' own preferences and
presumptions.

Note too that in most cases, someone doing web design work as a profession is
highly likely to use equipment that will produce his own least discomfort
sitting in front of a display most or all day. IOW, he'll be using a best
case environment, and be jaded WRT poorer other contexts. Couple his ideal
environment with the skewed age group of web designers generally, which means
better than average eyesight, and you get the sites you see today, which are
only moderately useable for average users, and poor or unusable for those
using higher pixel density and/or poorer vision than average.

Getting workable resolution independence into place will go a long way to
getting designers to dump their bad assumptions, and improve the user experience.
-- 
"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your
mouths, but only what is helpful for building
others up."			Ephesians 4:29 NIV

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/