[thelist] Re: Critique: www.tryspot.com/tharapita/

Eric Benvenue-Jennings eric at rapid13.org
Fri Mar 9 15:11:12 CST 2001


On 3/9/01 at 11:01 AM, thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org wrote:

> >I would like to receive some critique about www.tryspot.com/tharapita/
> >The design of this non-profit project and is not by me, but I am the one who
> >ordered the design so I'm interested in what you think about the site.
> >
> 
> The text is way too small on a Mac - remember Mac browsers usually 
> work at 72dpi as against 96dpi for Windows browsers. What is small 
> but readable on a Windows box can be unintelligible on a Mac.  I 
> couldn't read some of the menu options at all without looking at the 
> source code.  This is what happens when you set the size of text in 
> points - OK on a PC, tiny on a Mac.  Even on a Windows machine, 
> though, 7pt (which is what the menu is supposed to be, as far as I 
> can see from a quick look at the source) is too small (and 10pt is a 
> bit small for main body text, IMHO).
> 
> I have no gripes with the rest of the design, but if I came here with 
> a Mac I'd leave quickly - I'd rather not get splitting headaches from 
> peering at tiny text.

I'm on a Mac using IE 5 and the font sizes looked fine. I do often see sites
with type that is too small to be readable on my Mac but in this case everything
looks fine. I'm sure it's because I've set my IE resolution preference to 100
dpi. I just checked and changing it to 72 dpi makes everything unreadable. The
default setting is 96 dpi so you may be ok for most Mac IE 5 users. Can't say
for earlier versions or Netscape.

I use pixels to avoid this problem. I know it creates other problems but I've
found pixels to be less troublesome overall than points.

Attractive site but I have these comments: I wouldn't count on the icons being
understood without some kind of text to help identify them; on 800x600 you don't
see much "above the fold" - perhaps you could make the title bar a little
smaller and give the content area a little bit more width to maximize use of the
window area.

--
eric




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