[Wikipedia-l] Be bold in improving Wikipedia's ugly layout! (Richard Grevers)

[Richard Grevers]

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 11:34:37 +0200, Erik Zachte <e.p.zachte at chello.nl> gave 
utterance to the following:

>> Huh? In IE, Tools, Internet options, click the "fonts" button
>> on the first panel: "The fonts you select here are displayed on
>> Web pages and documents which do not have a specified text font"
>> - it's generic as can be. And I have 13pt Trebuchet
>> selected in every browser.
>
> So instead of waiting till 96% of all users change browser brand, you
> want these poor people to find and change a default browser setting that
> affects all web pages just for the sake of correcting Wikipedia design
> decisions.

You are so totally not getting this. The default browser setting will not 
affect "every web page" - it will only affect web pages which do not 
specify fonts and sizes, i.e. pages designed with accessibility as a 
priority. The best design decision is to make no design decision regarding 
font family and size - virtually every significant design website and forum 
pushes this line. For every user there is an optimal text presentation that 
they find easy to read, and only the user knows what that is - the designer 
can't guess it. And there is no question of this being an adjustment "for 
wikipedia only" - why should the user's optimal font for reading wikipedia 
be any different from their optimal font for reading anything else on the 
web?

And as for this 96% IE figure, that's higher than any stat I've seen, even 
for Win/Mac only.
Most stats seem to have IE6 at around 45%, IE5.5 28% and IE5 14%, and it 
actually appears that IE's market share has topped out and is slowly 
starting to erode.
>
> Maybe we can discard all Wikipedias except the English one, if a user
> really wants to read stuff in another language he can use Bable Fish. My
> point: you'll have to design for the actual world, not the world as you
> would like it be.
>
> Erik Zachte.
>
You were the one who posted "What about giving the reader more control over 
things like font type and size?"
I simply pointed out that the mechanism for this already exists and is 
supported by every visual browser since Mosaic. And it's exactly what 
Wikipedia's default skin does, whereas Cologne Blue inflicts an (In my 
opinion, which is pretty well supported among typographers) inferior font 
at too small a size.

-- 
Richard Grevers