[Bug admin|web|git/11934] web pages: small fonts in CSS

["carlos at systemhalted dot org" <sourceware-bugzilla@sourceware.org>]

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11934

--- Comment #5 from Carlos O'Donell <carlos at systemhalted dot org> 2012-02-10 21:39:10 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > Scaling pages is the best way to get consistently readable text, you need to
> > scale the layout elements along with the text size to maintain readability. 
> 
> No, having the pages always in a readable font size is the best way to get
> readable text.

Good point.

> > I didn't say "em" was *not* scaled, I said `px' and page scaling is in my
> > opinion *much* more readable. Why? Scaling fonts does not scale the layout
> > elements that contain the fonts,
> 
> You're wrong! If you specify a layout element to have some width in "em" and
> scale the font, the element will be scaled in the same proportion.

You are correct.

> > often resulting in overlapping text that is unreadable.
> 
> Because the pages are not well-designed. The main text (which is particularly
> important to be readable) should be allowed to be rendered in elements that do
> not have a fixed size, and adapt to the window width. Element widths can also
> often be determined automatically from the text they contain, thus avoiding
> overlapping text.

Good point.

This is in fact the way the main text on the new glibc website is laid out. The
central column does not have a fixed size and adapts to the window width.
Though below a minimum width it begins to wrap oddly.

> > On device with small screens you need to scale the entire rendered
> > view and pan to read (or detect the device and rendering a completely
> > different page).
> 
> And that's very bad. Horizontal scrolling (at each line) makes reading very
> difficult. Good web designers know to handle small screens in the same way as
> large screens. Contrary to formats with a fixed rendering such as PDF, HTML/CSS
> has been designed to allow the document to be rendered on various media (not
> necessarily graphic BTW).

I agree that it's bad.

Thank you for your feedback!

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