Interesting, unusual design – but the font-size seems to be too big for my taste, though you probably have a reason for that.
umm, are the thumbnails up top supposed to be vertically aligned? It looks a bit . . . peculiar. And ditto on the font size, it feels like you’re SHOUTING at everybody.
the fontsize is just fine, and doesnt look like shouting to me. Perhaps there is an accessability issue..
Dont forget to fix your naviagtional links 🙂 Other than its just fine, xhtml strict even.. nice job
Thread Starter
aesop
(@aesop)
The thumbnails should be horizontal. If you are seeing them vertical, it is a software bug in the version of FF that you are using. I will lay them out differently so as not to trigger that bug.
I had hoped that those who found the fonts too large would reduce them in their browser– in the same sense one might increase fonts that are too small by zooming them up.
Thanks so much for the feedback. It is helpful. And appreciated.
Why did you build the blog for your son? I’m always interested in reasons behind a design.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve got font sizes set in my browser so that 99% of the websites out there appear to have a font size that falls within a very comfortable range for me- and my feeling is that this is the way things should be designed, so that people don’t have to make adjustments to view YOUR particular website- they make those adjustments once, upon setting up their new computer for the first time and then never have to touch that again. This one, however, has font sizes that seem to be very much larger than any other unless I do make those adjustments just to view this site- but then I have to adjust them back for all the other sites, in my view, a PITA.
Now, if there is an accessibility issue and the majority of the people who will be viewing this site will need that large font size, then that’s understandable, and certainly I can survive one website that shouts at me (though I might not come back for repeat visits) but if you’re aiming for a wider audience, you might consider scaling that back just a bit.
[FF 1.0.7, Win2K]
Thread Starter
aesop
(@aesop)
jwurster>Why did you build the blog for your son?
aesop>Because he asked me too.
kickass>…things should be designed, so that people don’t have to make adjustments to view YOUR particular website-
aesop>Then why did I need to zoom the fonts on YOUR particular site to read it?
I very seldom have to zoom fonts anywhere to read a site, and certainly not kickass’s. And while I wouldn’t bother to reduce the size on your site, aesop, I did find it quite painful to deal with font sizes that large. I read in “gulps” of 10 or so words at a time, which is easy with a normal font size (somewhere in the neighborhood of 12pt in print, might come close to 1em in say, TNR or Georgia….) and with the font as large as it is in most of the actual text blocks on your site, it was quite difficult to read “normally” – for me.
Now if you and your son, and most of the people who will use his blog when it’s finished, are vision-impaired in some way, then that’s a logical reason for the huge fonts.
Otherwise, I too am seeing a vertical thumbstrip. And it’s an interesting layout.
[Edit: browser – FF 1.5 RC3 on XPPro SP1]
Thread Starter
aesop
(@aesop)
First off, neither my son nor I are vision impaired.
Second, it really does not matter what font-size one sets.
What does matter is providing the user the ability to scale the fonts up /or/ down in /any/ browser. And ensuring that the layout will not break, nor the text overlap. One test to check this is setting a minimum font size of 28 pixels. Or zooming the fonts to 200%. It is only a test. I am not advocating that everyone run around and change all their settings. Nevertheless, the number of sites that fail that test is sad.
The font-size I am using is difficult for you, there is no question about that in my mind. That to some extent is based on what you have come to accept as a standard. But ‘your’ standard does not necessarily represnt what is user friendly. It is rather a trend to use tinytype and mousetype. I can deal with that. I zoom it. If your layout breaks, or if I can’t zoom it, I go to your competitors site.
Typography is very simple to understand: it is about making content easy to read. Nothing more and nothing less. Some people are better at it than others. It is a minor art. The Web makes the practice of traditional tyography difficult. The user has control over what she believes is easy to read. This complicates matters. Particularly if she is not willing to excercise that control because of a preconceived ideal.
But then you know more about typography than me…
Ive taken a screenshot of what I see — I do not and never saw the top images in anything other than a horizontal plane (if thats in fact, what you have been discussing with reference to the thumbnails). I am assuming that the image that falls lower is supposed to be there, of course.
The screenshot is here:
http://www.village-idiot.org/ffscreeny.png
Thats with firefox 1.0.7 and my fonts are set at normal.
Some people are just fussy about fonts. Imo unless youre caps lock is stuck on, I dont often think a web site is yelling at me. People yell, web sites sit out in the virtual world somewhere.
In the end, its your site, anyway and that this has become such a passionate argument for “some” is somewhat funny to me.
Thread Starter
aesop
(@aesop)
Thanks so much for the screen shot’whooami.’ That shot shows how the thumbs are intended to be rendered. FF 1.5 rc3 on some OS is rendering them stacked vertically. I have not as yet been able to determine if this is, or is not, a software bug.
Your summation of the font question is on target and appreciated.
Thanks.
