Librarian Way

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There has been a very interesting discussion about scalable type on ACM SIGCHI’s CHI-WEB discussion list. I believe nonmembers can see the discussion by going to the CHI-WEB Mailing List, clicking on “Date” and selecting “June 2005, week 3.” There is also a little more discussion in week 4.

You are asking why there is even a discusson about it. Why not just let the user use the text size increase/decrease menu option or preference built into their browser? Some believe that many users are unaware of this option. I have no idea if this is so, but it seems that many who only have aging eyes may not be aware of the font size changing options in their browsers and when they come across a Web site that is difficult to read, they just leave.

There is no agreement about whether a Web page should have user scalable type and how to implement it. There are a few links to Web sites that have implemented various ways to give Web site visitors the option to make the type size larger or smaller, such as using JavaScript or CSS style sheets. I am interested in this because I am trying to figure out the best way to do this on Librarian Way. It is best implemented—in my opinion—through style sheets. The problem, as someone pointed out, is that having a font change can really mess up the rest of the page. Do you want a complete page change, such as navigation menus and content, or just the textual content (i.e., articles)? Someone mentioned that one Web site they visited has an option to increase the text, but the option is too small to see. Most Web sites that have font change options seem to restrict the font size change to the primary content section. The content is usually well contained within a certain width in relation to the browser Window size and the overall width of the other elements sharing the width. That way, the content with larger type becomes longer as the font size increases and it doesn’t overlap into content on either side of it.

A font size changing option is on my todo list. There is still so much that has to be done on this Web site. I think I fixed the Movable Type permalinks so that they can be found in Wordpress. I will blog the details this weekend.

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