Bigger default fonts - Page 2

October 27th, 2022, 1:27 pm

ira wrote:Seems to me like even small is bigger than it was before...

That's possible. Without getting all geeky about CSS...

Before the font size was specified as an absolute 10 pixels. Now "small" is specified as a relative font size to the overall document and browser default, which is considered more mobile-friendly. I don't have a screenshot handy, but the "small" looks smaller on my phone than before. But that may reflect it taking into consideration what I have set as the browser default, whereas before it was an absolute size.

#12: Post by **ira** » October 27th, 2022, 1:55 pm

Ah, the depressing influence of devices. I understand enough about web pages to understand. And I've written HTML in the past, you make a suggestion about what you want and hope the browser get's close.

#13: Post by **another_jim** » October 27th, 2022, 2:23 pm

Yeah, until I saw the announcement, I was scratching my head whether I had hit ctrl+ by accident. It is a better default on the phone, where ctrl +/- is harder to do.

#14: Post by **ira** » October 27th, 2022, 2:34 pm

I know why I'm confused, changing the font size does not effect the forum view which has gotten significantly larger than before and requires much more scrolling. Why doesn't making the font small make everything smaller?

#15: Post by **TallDan** » October 27th, 2022, 2:34 pm

Looks like the "My posts" page doesn't obey the smaller text size option.

#16: Post by **ojt** » October 27th, 2022, 2:44 pm

"Small" setting seems to work almost everywhere but not quite, at least on my iPhone. The Recent Topics page seems quite large still, and so do some random bits and pieces such as post titles and user names etc.

Font sizes should really be set as relative to the root font size, aka the font size set to <body>. One could for example say <body> has 75% font size which would mean 12px assuming browser standard of 16px. Then setting 1.3333rem on some element would mean it has 16px of actual font size. "rem" means "root em" and em means just font-size (roughly).

This way to change all font sizes (and element sizes if defined based on EMs) by just changing the <body> font-size.

Browsers and OSs may let the user change the defaults.

All this unless I've suddenly completely dropped off the map

But yeah, it is a bit of a mess.

October 27th, 2022, 3:16 pm

ira wrote:I know why I'm confused, changing the font size does not effect the forum view...

It should only affect the main text like in a forum post or article, not everything. This was a compromise because there were layout assumptions that allowing the font to change anywhere would mess up (e.g., the menu bar, navigation bar).

TallDan wrote:Looks like the "My posts" page doesn't obey the smaller text size option.

The list-type pages (recent topics, my posts, etc.) shouldn't be affected for the same reason above.

ojt wrote:Font sizes should really be set as relative to the root font size, aka the font size set to <body>....it is a bit of a mess.

Yeah, it's a mess, at least for some people. At this point, I'm tempted to back off the change entirely, since the site layout hasn't changed in years and nobody complained (well, except the accessibility tools I cited in the first post

).

#18: Post by **jpender** » October 27th, 2022, 4:16 pm

I liked the old font better.

Most of the time I view HB without logging in and I clear my cookies frequently so a user-specific option wouldn't help me. I've been messing around with my browsers to try and compensate but I can't quite get back to the same appearance.

It's not a big deal.

#19: Post by **ira** » October 28th, 2022, 1:12 pm

I keep hoping you'll shrinkify the Unread Posts list, seems like it's 16 point or something like that on my laptop and it makes for even more scrolling. And zoom is set at 100%. Reading posts is fine, it's just the unread list that's still huge.

#20: Post by **cafeIKE** » October 28th, 2022, 1:58 pm

I like the body font, but the giganto/BOLD compose and Topic Titles in the Unread windows are T O O M U C H