[thelist] "Web 2.0 sites with the big friendly fonts"

Barney Carroll barney at textmatters.com
Wed Feb 21 11:40:59 CST 2007


Felix Miata wrote:
> How many do or don't change theirs is unknowable, and, more importantly,
> shouldn't matter. The fact is most people accessing web sites are using
> personal computers that include the ability to personalize such things as
> text size as they see fit and/or find necessary. To presume that something
> other than their defaults are somehow better for them in their different
> environments because you like it better in your own environment is
> enormously rude.

What do you mean by "basing designs on 100% of user defaults", though? 
Is it just 'size text with ems or ens'?

I think 'extremely rude' is a weird consideration though - designers 
should rely on hypothesising personas and specialist skills rather than 
a taught sense of etiquette to govern such fundamental issues.

If the user was given exactly what they asked for, there'd be no such 
thing as designers or the internet. You have to look a bit beyond 
sometimes. Although, if you're simply advocating ems, I agree with you 
in practice. It's just dubious theory.


Regards,
Barney



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