Sorry if this has been asked before. I am wondering what text size setting people feel comfortable browsing with?

I have my IE text size set to medium and adjust it if necessary. So how many increases/decreases are you most comfortable with as your default setting?

Thanks for any and all feedback.;)

Medium is my prefernce. But I used to have a smaller monitor and therefore preferred a smaller text.

This is definately a web designers arch enemy. A perfect website viewed in medium can be thrown a curveball when someone views the same website with a Large text size setting. Sometimes even a smaller setting can dramatically change a websites motif.

I use medium. :)

I agree, it can create many problems, but I still like having the option of changing it. :)

Originally posted by DLee
This is definately a web designers arch enemy. A perfect website viewed in medium can be thrown a curveball when someone views the same website with a Large text size setting. Sometimes even a smaller setting can dramatically change a websites motif.

You could put a font-size selector (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/relafont/) on your website.

You could put a font-size selector on your website.
I just rely on people to use the handy font size selection built into the browser ;)

This is definately a web designers arch enemy. A perfect website viewed in medium can be thrown a curveball when someone views the same website with a Large text size setting. Sometimes even a smaller setting can dramatically change a websites motif.
This is one of the reasons fluid design is so important. Font size becomes a non-issue when sites adapt, and we all know you can't pin down a font size anymore anyway (nor should this be done).

Personally, I've always preferred slightly smaller than default size, but as much as designers like to decide the default should be smaller, I leave this alone.

Originally posted by the_pm
I just rely on people to use the handy font size selection built into the browser ;)

As the article I linked to mentioned, that's often not so handy. In Opera, I never change font size - I use the screen magnifier when needed. I'd like to avoid the fixed vs. fluid debate, and speak pragmatically. At first, I was designing my site strictly with relative font sizes, both percentages or ems. I haven't changed this, but I have decided to use a 'master font size' if you will, of 14px. I decided this for a few reasons, let me illustrate one:

My Mom and Dad. Arrgh! Dad with his magnifying half-glasses and Mom with her iMac, both have used IE for years without changing the default font size. Although either of their children could easily do this, and have tried, the result is some regularly-visited site now breaks. Without one of the kids present to walk them through reducing the default font size, this won't happen. So, the browser stays set to the default, and my Brother and I get to listen to the parents whine about unreadably-small font sizes on the web - a common complaint.

There are no ideal solutions to this issue, only compromises. My compromise, is that most of the intended visitors to my site will fall into the category of my parents - I want to override the default, and specify a font size based on pixels, which I know won't break my fixed design. Maybe a menu line-wraps, worst case. I do this because I want my website to be readable, whether or not a visitor is accessing it from their regular browser or knows how to change this setting. Granted, I'm inconveniencing some users, and it is for their sake that I may offer a size selector.

Interestingly enough, 14px is the default base font size for the 'medium' setting in IE and Opera. Not sure about Moz, but I suspect it's the same :)

I'm confused by all of this. Supposedly, a declaration of 14px (or whatever I choose) should be assigned to 'medium' and is by well-behaved browsers. IE, of course, sets it to large but only on Windows, additionally fouling up user fontsize preferences. Or something.

I'm just shooting for consistent presentation, is that so wrong? ;)

Originally posted by BigBison
I'm confused by all of this. Supposedly, a declaration of 14px (or whatever I choose) should be assigned to 'medium' and is by well-behaved browsers. IE, of course, sets it to large but only on Windows, additionally fouling up user fontsize preferences. Or something.

I'm just shooting for consistent presentation, is that so wrong? ;)
I'm just saying if you do not declare a font size anywhere in your documents, the 'medium' font size just so happens to be 14. Declaring this simply confirms it :) That's all - just a little point of interest.

From an article (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/wiwa/) on A List Apart:

But for IE/Windows users to be able to resize text, you must specify the font size in terms of %, em or a relative value (small, medium, etc.)

I don't yet know if this is true. But this is what made me think a website-based font size selector might not be such a bad idea.

Originally posted by BigBison
From an article (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/wiwa/) on A List Apart:



I don't yet know if this is true. But this is what made me think a website-based font size selector might not be such a bad idea.
Ah, but if you like 14px as the baseline for medium, why not simply specify nothing at all? Then all browsers can resize your text and your baseline will still be honored, and you don't have to employ a complex style switching device to do it!

Here are three scenarios, all of which are the exact equivalent of each other:

1. You place the following declaration in your stylesheet:
body { font-size:14px }
All browsers except IE respond to this by simply setting 14px as the baseline and they adjust from there. Then you employ a style-switching device for IE users, which may rely on cookies and/or JavaScript, depending on how you configure it.

2. You place the following declaration in your stylesheet:
body { font-size:100% }
All browsers including IE respond to this by setting 14 px as the baseline and all browsers adjust from there. No fancy devices necessary.

But, I'm sure you're saying to yourself "Self, why would I bother specifying font-size:100% when that's just stating the obvious?"

Good question. In scenario #3...

3. ...specify absolutely nothing about font sizes whatsoever. You have achieved the exact same thing as in scenarios one and two by simply relying on browser defaults.

KISS ;)

One problem!

I just removed my 14px size, resulting in larger text across all my browsers.

Either:
- default is greater than 14px?
- not specifiying leaves it up to the browser, which has noticed my OS specifies large fonts?

Your #2 and #3 above are indeed the same, Paul, I'm not so sure about #1 though.

Hmm...maybe I was wrong and the default is 16px?

Then try body { font-size:90% } and experiment from there :) I wouldn't go lower than 80% though - you risk losing people at that point.

If my design were fluid, I'd be tempted to use % or ems. For my current fixed design, I'm fixing font size at 14px, although I may bump that up to 15.

Looks like I'll be implementing a font-size script as well, because of IE/Win. Some people will be stuck with my choice, it looks like.

It would help knowing for sure that the default size is 16px (or whatever) across systems before trusting my font size to a %.

First of all, Kalina I'm sorry for turning this into something that it wasnt. I'm sure that you originally wanted this post to be everyone telling you what THEIR size was and we have turned it into something else, a topic that is more of an issue than an answer.

As for this new topic of which size the general public enjoys, IMHO I think what you do totally revolves around your target audience.

Sometimes groups of individuals (mostly the ones that know what they are doing) don't like thier font size controlled. On the other hand, others would care less about how the website looks as long as they can read it (i'm reffering to those with bad eye sight, mainly the older generation). And on the last note, you have those that deem the scroll bar a burden beyond all belief and want everything to fit in the page or they refuse to read it.

So look at the audience, your target audience, before choosing which is best. I am much more prone to allowing people to choose rather than choose for them, but as I stated before, thats IMHO.

Good Luck!

This will get you started with your confirmations :)

I compared total height and x-height in IE, Moz and Opera. In Opera, I used arial (my Opera default). In IE and Moz, I have the factory default, Times.

In all three cases, with different types of fonts, the default was 16.

Go to most web sites in a browser other then IE, and increase the text size once - then twice. So many of the layouts will get broken and lose many of their nice neat properties. Designers have become accustomed to IE allowing them to control what the user sees, instead of the user having the control.

The issue of users changing their text size is one of my personal nightmares that I've had to start addressing recently. With the help of people like Zopester and the_pm, I have not only started to design differently, but to think differently before the whole design process even starts.

Soon, I will have either crossed over and completed my change, or I will be going to look for both of them in order to get even for what they have done in complicating my life. ;)

My preferred text size is whatever the browser will dish out the pages in. Otherwise, the annoying sites with tiny text get either magnification (if I desperately need to read info) or a click on the big X in the upper right corner ;)

I will be going to look for both of them in order to get even for what they have done in complicating my life.

Well mate, from Oct 21st onwards, I'll be just down the road (figuratively speaking). Break out the beer, I'm on my way to Texas!! :D :D :banana:

And Texas will be better for it, my friend. :)

My preferred text size is whatever the browser will dish out the pages in. Otherwise, the annoying sites with tiny text get either magnification (if I desperately need to read info) or a click on the big X in the upper right corner
Amen to that sister! The big red [X] is a powerful tool against unruly Web sites!

Break out the beer, I'm on my way to Texas!!
No way - you're on your way over to our side of the ocean? That's great Mart!

Originally posted by DLee
First of all, Kalina I'm sorry for turning this into something that it wasnt. I'm sure that you originally wanted this post to be everyone telling you what THEIR size was and we have turned it into something else, a topic that is more of an issue than an answer.

As for this new topic of which size the general public enjoys, IMHO I think what you do totally revolves around your target audience.

Sometimes groups of individuals (mostly the ones that know what they are doing) don't like thier font size controlled. On the other hand, others would care less about how the website looks as long as they can read it (i'm reffering to those with bad eye sight, mainly the older generation). And on the last note, you have those that deem the scroll bar a burden beyond all belief and want everything to fit in the page or they refuse to read it.

So look at the audience, your target audience, before choosing which is best. I am much more prone to allowing people to choose rather than choose for them, but as I stated before, thats IMHO.

Good Luck!

I wasn't interested in this for design purposes. I am just curious what people set their default text size at. I am very aware of all the issues and concerns about text size design-wise.

Thanks for the great debate everyone. ;)

So... em sizes versus other methods, whats your pick? :P

I've never used em before.. i've not bothered to see how the sizes work.

I've just been px or pt. :P

There's a glaring em bug in IE that makes it a bit suspicious, but it takes special circumstances to make it appear. If you use decimals for your em statements (which is quite common) and you stack them so that one em changes the size of another component expressed via em, the second one blows up upon text resize! It's easier to show than to describe.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>IE resize bug</title>
<style type="text/css">
div { font-size: .9em }
</style>
</head>
<body>
It's a nasty bug indeed!
<div>
It's a nasty bug indeed!
<div>
It's a nasty bug indeed!
<div>
It's a nasty bug indeed!
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Try that one out. The last statement on the page should always be smallest, right? You're adjusting it downward by 9/10ths of an em with every nesting. Well, try resizing this in IE and watch the magic. To see how it's supposed to work, resize your text in another application.

Stupid, stupid, stupid browser.

This is why I generally stick with percentages. IE has some problems with font-size inheritence, but one line of code in your CSS will fix that problem.

No way - you're on your way over to our side of the ocean? That's great Mart!

Not to thread-hijack, but have a read of the new link in my sig. It explains what we're doing and how long it's taken...:D

I've seldom found the need to adjust the default text size in my browser, which is medium. However, recently I started appreciating being able to adjust this. My dad has difficultly reading the text at that size, and always needs to adjust the size to larger. In IE, some sites disallow this (ie: if it uses px for the font size), which can get frustrating.