Upcoming Change in Font Size

By Jian Shuo Wang on 2004-09-10 22:05 · Backstage

I have planned this for a long time, from the first day of this blog till now. I am going to change the current fixed font size (10pt) of this blog to a blog with relative font (100%, 120%…) size.

This is a change according to the suggestion of this article: Let Users Control Font Size.

I didn’t change since I used MovableType’s original CSS and the change made the page almost unreadable. Now, with two years gradual change, I will launch the bigger font version tomorrow, exactly at the first day of the third year of my blog.

Changes

The first change you notice is, the font in this blog becomes bigger. Now it is Verdana with 10pt in size. From tomorrow, it will change to 12pt Verdana if you are using Intenet Explorer’s default setting. This, I hope, give people better reading experience.

The second change is, you can control the font of all elements on this website. You can point to Text Size on View menu of IE and select one of the 5 text sizes: Smallest, Smaller, Medium, Larger, Largest. According to the size you select, the font size of the website changes. This feature was disabled in my current version since I explicitly specify the font size.

Feedback

Give me some feedback on how you like it. I hope the change is a positive move for most of readers. I am using this site as a usability project that continue to strike for the best usability possible.

5 Comments
Older-eyed readers will likely appreciate this flexibility :)
— Carroll · 2004-09-11 01:07
Very cool! :-)
— earthmilk · 2004-09-11 06:37
Definitely a welcome change. :)
— WilliamW · 2004-09-11 08:57
I would say, it maybe better to set the default font size as Verdana 10. and open the feature of adjusting size, you should know verdana 10 is investigated by microsoft several years ago to be the best font and size appear for user's comfortable reading. so i have to change back now in order to read your page comfortablely.
— Max Guan · 2004-09-11 17:02
Max, I see. I know Verdana 10pt is the standard font used on Microsoft.com and all online presence of Microsoft, however, after reading http://www.useit.com for three years, and http://www.w3c.org I am convinced that larger font is easier to read. Let me test for about one month before I decide to switch back.
— Jian Shuo Wang · 2004-09-11 17:08