I was partly thinking about this because of Charlie's insistence on labeling all of his blog's text as too small, but I've noticed it through other websites as well.
Simply put: the most common keyboard shortcut I use is Command-T (open new tab), but the next more common shortcuts are Command-W (close window) and, crucially, Command-+ (make text bigger). Command-- (make text smaller) happens somewhere as well. Now, this can't be because people are building websites that have text in the wrong size.
I realised this is because I read web pages differently. Some web pages, I read with my face fairly close to the screen, possibly because I've been programming. Others I read with my face further away - perhaps because I'm taking time out from "work"*, and I want to relax a bit.
A really evil thing happened a while ago: CSS stylesheets started specifying explicit font sizes, and you couldn't override them. Thankfully, at least in Chimera, this era is over.
*: Only pointy-haired bean-counters imagine that time spent reading up on your profession is somehow wasted. Feh. id
Leave a comment