Font size on CUK articles.

[Sysman]

It arose from web designers who were a) young and therefore had razor-sharp eyesight, b) equipped with top-notch monitors designed for producing designs for print, and c) used to producing designs for print, where such a small font size would be more easily read (reality having more dots-per-inch than the average monitor). Many people also have monitors with a higher dot pitch these days, which exacerbates the problem.

I recall an HP network management program from the 1990s which suffered from this. You really did need a 21" screen to read it, and those were so expensive then that nobody except graphics shops had them.

Until taken over by HP, the Compaq web site actually used

font size=1

and refused to budge in spite of many complaints, their stance being that it looked fine in IE (my then client had a large intranet investment using Netscape and IE was banned). I used to copy and paste stuff on a regular basis.

[The Wikir Man]

Print the articles out, and use a magnifying glass instead.

Do your bit for the environment.

[TimberWolf]

Sitting closer to the monitor is even cheaper than that.

Sitting closer would likely make things worse.

[VectraMan]

Is is a small font, but even so if you can't read it, you need probably new specs. They're only £1 from Poundland.

Sitting closer to the monitor is even cheaper than that.

[TimberWolf]

Is is a small font, but even so if you can't read it, you need probably new specs. They're only £1 from Poundland.

[NickFitz]

The font is indeed ridiculously small. This problem was widespread, although thankfully it's becoming less common.

It arose from web designers who were a) young and therefore had razor-sharp eyesight, b) equipped with top-notch monitors designed for producing designs for print, and c) used to producing designs for print, where such a small font size would be more easily read (reality having more dots-per-inch than the average monitor). Many people also have monitors with a higher dot pitch these days, which exacerbates the problem.

It's currently set to 10px (pixels). As these are CSS reference pixels rather than device pixels, they should in theory be scaled proportionately to the device on which they are rendered. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware no browser actually performs the mapping from CSS reference pixels to device pixels according to spec.

It should be 12px at an absolute minimum. Better would be to leave it at the browser default, which is 16px; many people think this too large initially, but they soon get used to it. It also allows for a more open design, with more whitespace which makes things easier on the eye, and offers further opportunities to enhance the user experience through providing an (unnoticed but effective) vertical synchronisation of the disparate elements on the page. (N.B. I don't agree with Richard's choice of 12px as the default font size in that article, but he's a designer, and the fundamental point he's making is of great value.)

That brings up another point: lots of early web designers used small fonts to cram stuff in, because they had read some research from the 1990s that suggested that a number of users were unfamiliar with the idea of scrolling, or disliked it. Given that the publishers of that research have established, in more recent studies, that users have changed and scrolling is no longer an issue, there is no good reason for cramming as much text into one screen's worth as possible.

Oh, and what TykeMerc said: except if the font size is specified in pixel values on IE < 7, that won't work (because IE < 7 sucks even more than IE = 7).

[TykeMerc]

Tried Ctrl and + ? This is a zoom in function on IE and Firefox (not tried other browsers), it might help. Ctrl and - is zoom out.

I must admit I've noticed the font is small, but not badly so to my eyes.

[Durbs]

Looks ok to me, maybe check: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...1002910AAdr6Jz

[BolshieBastard]

Why is it so ******* small!

I cant read the news articles cos the font is so bleedin' small. Even with my reading glasses its a task. Changing the setting in my browser dont help either before any bright spark suggests it.

Meh.