Font Size Widgets -- Your Take
April 27, 2004 | 
34 Comments
One of the things that’s come up as a result of my images vs. text dilemma down at work, and the subsequent discussion here, has been the question of whether or not those nifty little font size tools are useful or not.
Even before I brought it up here I’ve wondered about this. I mean, they aren’t all that hard to maintain, but they do add a bit of work in that when you make an update to the CSS you need to do it in two places. At least that is what I have to do.
Why bother if these aren’t used at all? In my experience observing users I’ve never seen them resize the font, period, let alone via one of these widgets. This isn’t all that surprising and doesn’t really mean too much, but it does make me wonder.
Are they just there to sooth our Web design guilt? I’ve seen them many time used to get around using a percentage based font size. I don’t imagine that’s really helping much.
Hell, even if they are used, I feel they only offer limited benefit. I mean they’re cool and all, but how far do they really go to help user access? I would imagine if you really needed to bump the text up to read it you’d probably have that set in your browser. Thus making it more important for a Web designer to make sure the font is set so that the browser can override the size.
So, what do you all think? Do you think they are useful? Have you ever used one to resize text on a site? Do they even work well? Do you feel it’s more important to make sure the browser’s resize text functions works?
What’s your take on font size widgets?
Filed under: Web Design
Comments
1. Simon Willison said:
I think it’s easy to underestimate the number of people who benefit from being able to resize text. I’ll use my Dad as an example: he was really impressed when I showed him how to resize text in Firefox (I switched him) and said he often has trouble reading text on sites. He didn’t know how to resize text in IE either. Would he discover and use a font sizing widget on a page considering he hadn’t discovered the one in his browser? It’s very hard to say.
I’ve never seen actual statistics on how much these widgets are used. It would be interesting to add a font sizing widget to a site along with a Javascript tracker that quietly tips off the server whenever the widget is used.
Posted on April 27, 2004 12:23 PM | #
2. Keith said:
Simon – Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite sure that the ability to change fonts is very useful. That’s not in question, even though I’ve not seen a user actually do it.
It’s the widgets that I wonder about. Especially when used in lieu of using font sizes that the browsers (IE especially) can override.
Posted on April 27, 2004 12:43 PM | #
3. Michel Vuijlsteke said:
I personally never use the font size widgets, but I *do* use Firefox’s resizing (ctrl + mouse wheel) all the time.
Posted on April 27, 2004 12:47 PM | #
4. Jennifer Grucza said:
Hmm, well I use the browser’s text-resize all the time, since I use a high-resolution laptop and so many designers like to use itty-bitty fonts. But I’ve been browsing the web since 1994, and I’m a software engineer, so I’m probably not the typical user of something like your hospital site.
I doubt anyone else in my family is aware of being able to do this in your browser. But they might miss it on a web page, too - I know my eyes often have a tendency to slide right by those widgets on the websites that have them.
Many sites have a FAQ or help section - why not just have a question like “The text is too small - how can I resize it?” Then tell them how they can do that in the popular browsers. It’s unlikely that they can’t read the text at all, so they’ll be able to read this (though they might have to squint a little) and then know how to change the font size to something more comfortable. Those who are incapable of reading it because of really bad vision probably already know how, or use magnifiers, right?
It seems silly to replicate functionality that’s already in the browser. I’d rather spend my time on other issues, personally.
Posted on April 27, 2004 12:53 PM | #
5. Sean King said:
I think it all depends on your target audience. If you’re targeting anyone over 40, a text-sizing widget is very useful, if not necessary.
Its an old horse to beat, but browsers make the text sizing controls so hard to find that providing a small, visible, widget is really the only alternative that makes sense. Its small, and relatively unobtrusive, and (hopefully) helps the small percentage of your users that really need it.
Maybe future browsers will build some sort of text-size control into the browser interface, like Opera’s “%” drop-down. But until that time, its good to remember that the text-size widget is still very new and has yet to become an established web design convention (like left-hand navigation or bread crumbs).
Posted on April 27, 2004 12:58 PM | #
6. -b- said:
Font widgets, and I use them on one of my sites, are like those little badges of courages (xfn, xml, etc.). They indicate an allegiance to a design cause or meme, but add little to the user. One exception I can think of is a client that asked for a bigger font size and I gave him a switcher he uses. We added them because of limitations in IE, but that can be resolved by using fonts the browser can change. This reminds me of the points Jason Freid made coming out of SXSW
http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives/000600.php
We need to get over the technology - standards-based design, accessibility, etc should be part of our craft (as stated by Veen), but not necessarily something the user should see.
Posted on April 27, 2004 01:33 PM | #
7. Paul G said:
What I think would be truly useful for users is a prominent placement of the browser’s text size controls. How hard would it be to put two little increase/decrease text size buttons next to the usual interface buttons? One click to bigger text. You could argue that the buttons don’t belong there because users don’t resize text nearly as much as they hit “refresh” or “print”, but that’s probably because no one knows how.
Do you think people would use it more if they knew it was there?
Posted on April 27, 2004 02:24 PM | #
8. Harry said:
I don’t have numbers, but I never use these. I never switch styles; I always go with the default. I change text size with the browser, and I show other users how to do the same. In my opinion, text-resizing widgets are the new Flash intro.
If the font is too difficult to read the first time, I blow up the text if I’m searching for information. If I’m just browsing, I leave.
Even when available, text size widgets in web pages only serve a small portion of the people who need them, that is unless you have provided ten sizing options ranging from -50% to 500%.
Not to mention the fact that people with near- and far-sightedness are only the tip of the iceberg. If you are concerned with accessibility, you should also test your widget with low-vision users. These people use screen magnifiers (e.g. ZoomText) to blow up text to a size that might seem gargantuan to a person with 20/20 vision. If you’ve set your style sheets to use absolute font sizes, even if you offer a choice, the zooming software may not be able to enlarge the text beyond your largest size. If your largest size is not 5 times as large as your default size it’s not big enough for some of these users. Yes, we’re talking about a range of 11px to 55px. Read “Bridging the gap: between accessibility and usability” for some useful guidelines based on a study of blind and low-vision users.
Lastly, I think the burden for text resizing widgets should be put on browser developers, not web designers. Just like the Print function, the browser is where resizing belongs. Opera has a good head start, but their feature is not as simple to use as is clicking a button labeled A- or A+. Unreadable web sites are a serious problem, but providing two or three text size options and a JavaScript widget won’t solve it.
Posted on April 27, 2004 02:33 PM | #
9. Scrivs said:
I think a bigger problem is designers who use such small fonts that even if a user were to look for those widgets they could not find them. Make the font readable from the beginning and you should have less of a headache.
However, this kind of question can not be answered here I think, because many of us “designers” like to use high-res screens and do not mind small text. I know I am just speaking in general, but that is what I have seen from the designers I have come across.
It really does seem that this is the type of question Nielsen should be researching so he can provide us with some much needed information.
Posted on April 27, 2004 02:33 PM | #
10. Brian said:
Harry said:
This was my main problem with switchers - most only provide a choice between “big” and “small.” Still not enough control given to the user to be truly useful. So I set out to write the font switcher that you can see here: http://lunaport.com/. It’s not perfect for sure, but I think it’s nicer in that it allows unlimited incremental scaling up and down and, perhaps most importantly, a reset button.
Posted on April 27, 2004 02:52 PM | #
11. Terry said:
Personally I like the javascript font resizing widgets. Usually its standard practice to have a cookie set each time you change text size, this is the best part of it as far as I’m concerned. Comming back a few days later and voila your preferred size is automatically updated. Resizing the text manually in your browser doesn’t allow for this functionality. Its an of javascript adding to the usability of the site, albeit at the expense of accessibilty if cookies and/or javascript happens to disabled.
Posted on April 27, 2004 02:56 PM | #
12. Zelnox said:
I think it depends on the implementation of the widget. When I see them, I use them just for fun, and it happens that the change in font size is barely visible. (>_<)
The widget may be useful to control things the browser does not. Maybe something like kerning and tracking. (-_-?) I do not know whether browsers can do this or not.
Posted on April 27, 2004 03:19 PM | #
13. pixelkitty said:
I change the font size on almost every website I visit. The default on the mac in firefox is ridiculously small on my studio display and I cant adjust it any bigger.
But I do not use built in widgets on sites.
Why not you ask?
Because:
They are difficult to find;
They are inconsistent;
Their medium may be my small;
The browser already does what I want.
I think the widgets on websites are a guilt-driven, in-crowd hyped fad and will dissapear as more and more web browsers support text resizing by the user.
Posted on April 27, 2004 03:52 PM | #
14. Thomas Baekdal said:
I have always thought that “font size widgets” was a crazy designer idea - of which nobody really has any use for.
The reasons are many:
1: If it is there, you already have a problem.
2: It is often placed in rather obscure position of the site, it is too small to notice, use symbols which you cannot understand, or all of the above.
3: It is a narrow-minded approach (works only for your site, not the next one your reader is visiting)
4: Nobody want to spend their time adjusting websites - they come to read what you publish, not fiddle with settings (that is a geek thing). This is why style-switchers are of little use too.
Some might say “my site is already made with relative font sizes - it is just an extra feature”. True, but it still does not work. If a font-size widget could alter the overall browser setting, then it would be useful.
What we really need, and what I think would work, is a guideline for displaying content - a visual specification - which basically states that, by default, body text should be this size, h1 should be that size, h2 should be this etc.
Example:
Base size = 11pt
H1 = 1.6em
h2 = 1.5em
h3 = 1.4em
h4 = 1.2em
h5 = 1.1em
h6 = 1.1em
p = 1em
etc.
And, we would have a validator to check if our site is adhering to these specifications
Ideally, this would be incorporated as a standard into future browsers – so that setting font-sizes at all would be a thing of the past.
Just the same as we have all agreed on making sites according to the XHTML/CSS specification, we should also agree on a visual specification - and for all the same reason. We use XHTML to make our sites better in terms of accessibility, structure, ease of use, and speed. We should apply a visual specification to make our sites better in terms of accessibility, speed, ease of use, and content.
We have gone a long from non-structured markup – to structured markup. Now we need move above the “surface” and make our visual representation consistent too.
PS: I can already hear the roar from the design community :)
Posted on April 27, 2004 04:05 PM | #
15. Cameron Adams said:
I have on occasion used a widget to resize the text, particularly in IE, but if the browser has proper font resize controls it’s faster to do it that way.
That being said, resize widgets don’t hurt a site’s usability in any way, they’re a helpful tool that some people could use, so why not have them?
Probably one thing that could be improved is the size of the actual controls. The widgets are primarily designed for people who can’t read the text well, but most resizers I’ve seen are at the default size (including mine); would the people who need them be able to see them?
… as for making standard font sizes/proportions for different headings? Why don’t we just make standard fonts across all sites? Courier for all!
Posted on April 27, 2004 06:08 PM | #
16. Stephen said:
Thomas: I wrote this huge rant over how wrong you are, but then realized that if you don’t see the mistakes you’ve made there’s no point in my descriptions. :P
And should I bring up that your homepage uses blue on blue text? How “usable” is that?
Posted on April 27, 2004 07:33 PM | #
17. Andrei Herasimchuk said:
Why stop there? Why not create a color specification as well? If you don’t use the approved colors in the spec for all objects, like this color blue for links, then your site won’t be considered standard. And then once we do that, we can nuke column sizes with a specific widths aimed at controlling line length, because allowing variable width columns create visual differences. And then we’ll have to make sure everyone uses Arial only, because with all these standard, Arial will be the best font to view all content with.
Ok… I got it… why don’t we all just use Nielsen’s design at Useit.com as the standard and be done with it. Ok… I’m sold.
No need for uproar. It’s simply a silly idea. Save this message and read it five years from now. I’m sure you’ll agree then.
Posted on April 27, 2004 08:20 PM | #
18. Keith Hall said:
I agree with Sean. It depends a great deal on your target audience. I personally do not use them because I use the text resizing function in Firefox. But if your users are not technically savvy, they may not know about this feature. Having a font resizing widget with an adequate amount of sizing options and in which the interface is designed in an intuitive manner is helpful. I don’t think it takes anything away at all. Nor do I think its useless. It is simply another option. Those who know how to resize the text using the functionality the browser provides will most likely do so, while those who are not aware of such techniques will most likely use the widget(again, assuming the widget is designed in such a manner that they can readily see that it is for resizing text).
Posted on April 27, 2004 08:33 PM | #
19. Keith said:
Thomas, while you do bring up some good points about the font size widget, you’re other points really don’t make a whole lot of sense.
Every Web site has different goals and different audiences. Maybe, although I highly doubt it, you could go through your career using a spec like you talk about, but most of us wouldn’t stand a chance.
There is a place for design, for art and for style on the Web. Heck, a HUGE part of the Web is all about that.
What about entertainment?
There is a need for flexibility on the Web, and it’s just as much for users as it is for designers.
I’m sorry, but what you suggest sounds pretty ridiculous. I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll realize that like Andrei says, there is no need for uproar, it’s just not a realistic, practical or even usable by any real world standard.
Posted on April 27, 2004 09:18 PM | #
20. Joseph Lindsay said:
Thomas,
I agree with the first part of your post. However, setting up a standard specification for elements I have to question. The browsers already do this by default, try turning off stylesheets.
The semantics experts out there (correct me if I’m wrong) will tell you that (X)HTML is for describing document content, not defining how it should be displayed. (insert standard argument for separation of content from display here…)
Keith,
As for the resizing widget: I think that it is a very cool trick, but I just use the “CTRL+Scroll” if text is too small. I’ve never found a site on which the text is to big to be readable, although I have seen sites that would look better if the size was decreased. As noted by others, there is no standardisation of the widget, and in most cases they are too small/obscure for the users that actually need them.
Posted on April 27, 2004 09:52 PM | #
21. Nakijo said:
I agree with most of pixelkitty’s points regards the widgets, however the exception is that I NEVER change the font on sites (except for testing and whatever, never for my own use). One of my ‘kill’ indicators is too small a font. Just like compulsory flash intros, I simply close the site
I guess folks could argue that I’m missing some great material, but there is an awful lot of it out there and I don’t want to waste my time fiddling. I may have to change my approach if my eyesight starts to fail, but I think there would be many people who would view the situation as do
Posted on April 27, 2004 10:47 PM | #
22. Tom Werner said:
I think the biggest argument against font size widgets is the corresponding absolute css font size attributes that they generally accompany. Designers will think, “hey, I can specify my font sizes in pixels as long as I provide a ‘normal’ and ‘large’ font size widget!” This perpetuates the use of pixels as a css font size unit, which then blocks browser based font resizing in certain browsers.
Font size widgets are effectively de-standardizing the font resizing effort. If users have to try to figure out where the font resize widget is on every page they go to, that’s needlessly expended effort. The browser makes this function available, and it should be our job, as web designers, to make sure it works properly on our sites.
I think the future of font sizing will be a best practice to specify css font sizes as percentages (or ems), and allow users to resize text via a command that is consistent across browsers.
The most useful thing I can think of is to keep those little font size widgets around, but instead link them to a page that explains how to resize text using a variety of browsers. That way, you inform people that are in need of font resizing of the proper way to do it, and hopefully make their entire web browsing experience more enjoyable.
Posted on April 27, 2004 11:39 PM | #
23. Thomas Baekdal said:
he he, God morning guys - I can see my comment had some effect :)
Stephen wrote:
Not as much as Black on white I admit. I probably need to crank up the contrast a bit - Thanks.
Andrei wrote:
I do think we should have color guidelines, and we should have line-length guidelines. In regards to be as specific as saying “Arial only” it is of little importance. Verdana, Times, Georgia etc. are all equally good as long as the font-size is adequate.
BTW: I am writing guidelines, not requirements.
ha ha, if I’d only had a dollar for every time I heard that one - not I would not like that :)
Keith,
Absolutely true, I too constantly have to make compromises in order to succeed. That does not mean that I cannot try to push for a better solution. We all made table-based design once – our clients even demanded it once (some still do). But, we pushed for XHTML and generally succeeded. So could we with readability.
BTW: I can hardly say that this is an issue on your site or on Stephens, Andrei’s sites. All being highly readable.
Yes, very true indeed – and there should still be a place for it. But, a newspaper should not emphasize on designing their website, they should emphasize on readability. So is it with most other sites that publish articles, product info etc.
I am not at all saying that the sites should then be without design, but for those sites it should have a supportive nature to the articles. For entertainment sites, or showcases – the design plays a important role in the presentation. Vodaphone Future being a great example (as pointed out in another discussion).
But, there is a distinct difference between pages that exists to inform, and pages that exists to entertain or exhibit.
Joseph,
Absolutely correct.
—
I have no intention of removing creative spirit, art or graphical exhibition. I just do not want to see it mixed with product information, articles, news sites etc.
Today we have guidelines for markup and accessibility, which you can use to make your site great (or choose not to). What I would like is a readability guideline, to help people making information sites readable. We could even have different levels of readability – like with the accessibility guidelines.
I do think the browsers should use these by default, but you can still overwrite it if needed (like when creating entertainment).
Ohh.. and sorry for the long reply.
Posted on April 28, 2004 01:08 AM | #
24. DarkBlue said:
I wouldn’t put these on my websites. I wrote a bit of a rant about this a while back so I won’t repeat it here.
Posted on April 28, 2004 02:22 AM | #
25. Joshua said:
Every time that there is talk about which options to provide users with (like font widgets), there is talk about setting guidelines that others should follow.
This happens in many design blogs (as well as in every industry), and is a natural progression of things. We try to take instances of learning and apply them to new, more general situations. This effort shouldn’t be blindly dismissed.
However, I think Andrei (and others) are right in that we cannot have guidelines for everyone or all sites. Right now, it is very possible to take the multitude of guidelines out there and build a bad web site. Just like it is possible to write a horrible sonnet, though it have 14 lines.
But what about guidelines for each user group? Namely, the user group that visits your web site. I think Keith is getting some of that valuable feedback now, from his users. But it would be troublesome, I think, to try to apply the results he’s getting here to other sites with other users until you can measure their reaction or usage directly.
Posted on April 28, 2004 05:50 AM | #
26. Keith Hall said:
While I will agree that most current implementations of resizers are limited, I think we are still missing the point. Are we talking about current implementations or are we talking about how to implement them correctly? I am assuming that you would do the very best job that you could to make sure that the feature provides the most benefit to your users. Granted, we have to weigh the benefits of taking the time to do it properly with the budget and timeline of the project. Sean’s previous comments about unlimited scaling is a reasonable solution. I mean as long as you scale up and down by a factor of 1.2 or %20 you are not limited to a range of font sizes.
As for making font sizes standard, I only have one question. How do you know that those sizes will work for all vision impaired users? I think it defeats the entire purpose of having scalable fonts. We don’t know how large a visually impaired person needs their fonts. I mean, it is going to be different for each individual user. So is the question that you are really asking here, “Do the benefits of implementing font resizing widgets outweigh the costs (time and money) of implementing them correctly?” That answer is unique to each project.
Posted on April 28, 2004 09:09 AM | #
27. Sean King said:
Wasn’t the font-size widget born out of IE’s inability to resize pixel-width fonts in Windows? And since that is still the case today, isn’t this widget really just an accessibility hack?
Granted, the encouraged methods for sizing fonts are em and percent-based, but many designers still insist on using pixel-width definitions, locking users into one font size on the world’s most popular browser and platform.
I’ll reiterate what I said earlier, if your site’s target audience demographic is over 40, and the designer insists on defining fonts by pixel, a font-size widget should be a requirement. It is a small design cost for adding a level of accessibility that your target audience needs.
Posted on April 28, 2004 10:34 AM | #
28. Andrei Herasimchuk said:
Bingo!
In fact, the only reason users can’t easily resize fonts is due to defaults of the browsers. (Almost all of them.)
In IE, you have to turn on a checkbox to ignore font sizes, which is hidden two dialogs deep in the Internet Options dialog. In Safari, you have to enable the “Text Size” option under the View menu to see the easy to use font size controls. (Which I have done for my browsing.)
I don’t remember the settings for Firefox or Opera off the top of my head, but I don’t remember a font size control being easy to find or use from the default setting.
I added the font size widget to my site purely as a means to help the 50% of my audience who mostly uses IE. People viewing my site from other browsers rarely seem to complain. So yes, the font size control is nothing more than a redundant hack until the browsers put the font sizing controls more prominently up to the front and allow them to work as default behavior.
And even then , I suspect only 10% of the user base would actually use them on a frequent basis.
Posted on April 28, 2004 11:52 AM | #
29. Andrei Herasimchuk said:
Then you are missing a key aspect of good design, and that it how these elements work in relation to each other. What dictates the guidelines? In your simple example, it was a base font of 11pt. Well, first of all, what does 11pt mean on a 14” laptop monitor versus a 21” flat panel display? (You do understand issues around resolution, I assume.)
Then you have to ask yourself, what if the font doesn’t display well in 11pt or 11 pixels? Arial looks horrible to my eyes at that size and usually is better at 12px or 13px as a base font. Yet, Georgia seems fine at 11px.
There already are guidelines for good line length and color systems. There a volume of books and design classes that teach these things. The problem is that creating guidelines and design systems are all relative to an anchor, and that anchor is very arbitrary and usally dervied by the designer.
Good line length results from what font you choose, and the size you display the font. So, if one used Arial and then switched to Georgia, the guidelines created have to be reworked to understand how the base font at a specific size dictates what a good line length is.
You simply will not succeed in creating a system of far reaching guidelines in this regard. If you could, then design could be created by machines, without need for human hands.
All you need to do is get more people to learn the fundamentals of design. In the tech world, there are far too many people who work on “design” who have next to no design background, nor have taken the tiime to learn the principles of the field.
Posted on April 28, 2004 12:04 PM | #
30. James Craig said:
Keith, I wonder if you’d give me your thoughts on something I brought up at SXSW, because it’s related to your argument. Mainly, when is the user expected to meet us halfway?
Posted on April 28, 2004 01:42 PM | #
31. Thomas Baekdal said:
Andrew,
Yes, that is an issue to take into consideration - also why I suggested the browser should set the base setting, not the designer. As a designer, we do not know how big our reader’s screens are (or what resolution they use). But, the browser knows (at least in most cases on new systems).
Well, a possible solution was to detect the font use and have the base setting correct itself accordingly. It is not that hard - we can do that it with JavaScript today (but, again I would prefer the browser handled the base setting).
Eh… why? Research suggests (although it varies greatly) that the optimal CPL (characters per line) is 60. So regardless of font face used, the “container” box should have a variable width of 60 CPL. Keep in mind that the font-size would already be readable because of the adjustments suggested above.
Wait-a-minute!!! - That cannot be done. No, true - but what stops us from suggesting that it could be done in the future?
he he, if we had to learn anything from our history of mankind - then I would say anything is possible. I too do not believe that such a thing will happen within the next 2-3 years, but after that - who knows?
Yes. Maybe one day we will outsource all our web-design work to “US Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc.” instead of people from India :)
—
Anyway, you can continue finding flaws in my original comment - after all, I wrote it in 5 minutes and I would be surprised if I in that time-span could foresee every possible situation. I can continue counter-act all these flaws with suggestions how to solve it.
But, it is pretty pointless because I believe that we generally agree on the goal. And the goal is not the guideline (that’s the tool); it is to make every site readable. I have visited your site many times, and I can see that readability is an important factor to you. So is it with this site.
The question is then – how do we help people who make hard-to-read sites? Well, today we can help them with structure (XHTML) and accessibility (WAI). But we lack things like readability and usability.
On this site, Keith’s footer includes the following because it is important to him (or so I guess):
Validation: XHTML | CSS | Section 508
What if it was:
Validation: XHTML | CSS | Section 508 | Readability | Usability
That is what I like to have. First of all; I can the check my site against a set of known best-practices and secondly as a way to tell my readers that I care about these things.
Ohh… And sorry for another long post :)
Posted on April 28, 2004 02:04 PM | #
32. Thomas Baekdal said:
Err… I mean Andrei - not Andrew. Sorry!
Posted on April 28, 2004 02:07 PM | #
33. Andrei Herasimchuk said:
The optimal CPL is not news. Anyone who knows anything about typography knows the ranges for readable type and line length. Further, if you know about typography, you also know that font faces have different shapes such that the line length in real units is actually quite different from font face to font face. Yes, even between Arial, Georgia, Verdana and Times.
If the line length in real units is different, that menas the relationship between text blocks and other various aspect of the design, like logo sizes, image sizes, rules, columns…. they all change. It’s like pulling a string on a sweater… it all unravels very quickly.
You give them a copy of Bringhurst’s Elements of Typographic Style and tell them to read up. There is no shortcut. In fact, you would do yourself a favor to read the book if you haven’t yet.
Posted on April 28, 2004 04:35 PM | #
34. Thomas Baekdal said:
Yes, that is a good book.
Posted on April 28, 2004 04:48 PM | #
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