At 12:37 PM 7/22/03 +1200, Richard Grevers wrote:
On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 23:38:06 +0200, Erik Zachte
<e.p.zachte(a)chello.nl>
gave utterance to the following:
>What about giving the reader more control over things like font type and
>size ?
>
>This is really not so hard to do. A special page could offer choices in
>font size, style and colour. The choices would be stored in a cookie
>(ok, a small minority will not benefit from this). Settings are applied
>through javascript after the page has loaded.
No thank you. Javascript is a security risk; Wikipedia doesn't need it
and shouldn't ask me to use it.
So, minimal
overhead for
the server, it just includes a static js file. Direct feedback for the
user, click a different size and presto! view the results. These
formatting options might be added to the preferences page.
There's really no need to do any of the above. One gives the reader full
control over font size and face simply by not specifying them in the HTML
or stylesheet. They are then rendered in the user's preferred default
which they set in their browser.
Most of us set defaults for common things like "visited link", not for unusual
ones like "Wikipedia talk page".
(Any user who seriously cares about optimizing
readability will probably
be using a browser other than IE where the size control options are rather
limited)
Ninety-six percent of Internet users are on IE these days. I'm in the other
four percent,
but we need to design for the typical user, not drive most people away with
religious
wars.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr(a)redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org