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Default Font Size: The Battle is Won
How could we publish the first edition of a site like UsableType without an article on font sizing? It would be like toast without butter, fish without chips, a Bush without war.
So here it is: another article on font sizing.
This one however, is not intended to expose the pros and cons of various sizing methods. In fact, it is not going to address any particular methods of font sizing at all. What it is intended to be is a base for further discussion. A central hub if you like, with many a spoke thrusting outwards to create a spinning wheel of controversy.
I want to talk about designers that lower their body text below the default font size. These ill-mannered, uncouth, hooligans that neglect standards, fly in the face of accessibility, and… oh, hang on, I'm one of them. Damn.
What's going on?
I thought I was better than that. I thought I had a grasp of web standards that was allowing me to deliver tight semantic code, bandwidth saving CSS, and accessible sites to all. So why have I (and if you want to admit to it too, now is the time to do so) ignored one of the most obvious premises of usability?
First, a little history
From 2000 onwards all the leading browser makers adopted a default font size of 16 pixels (px). Before this time, default font sizes did not match up across operating systems, causing havoc with designers’ patience and sanity. So the introduction of a true standard default was hailed as a pretty good day for the web. Developers felt this would help solve the problem of delivering consistent font sizes across platforms, and there was much rejoicing by all.
Unfortunately it didn't really work out that way. The 16px default font size is rather large. Not huge, but just a little too large for comfortable reading on an average resolution monitor. Macintosh users in particular were used to a smaller default. They took one glance at the new size and promptly switched their default back to the 12px they were used to seeing. All that good work, all that exciting promise: undone in three clicks of a mouse.
Meanwhile, web designers where looking at their pages and thinking, hmm... that's a rather large font size for body text; I think I'll drop it by about 10%.
With both groups (designers and users) lowering the font sizes, the result was inconsistency, confusion, illegible text, and a whole mess as big as the one we started with in the first place.
What's the solution?
The true solution is obvious, surely? Either users or designers stop lowering default font sizes. Users shouldn't have to do that of course. They want control over their web pages; to see them at a size that is comfortable (or indeed necessary for visually impaired users), without having to adjust the font size for every different site they come across.
So that leaves us. Designers. Simple really.
Every accessibility and usability rule in the book tells us to let the user control the experience. If they want to lower their default size, then let them. But don't do it for them!
Right. Who wants to change?
The short answer to that is: no one.
I have spent the last 3 months developing this site, UsableType. And after not much soul searching and discussion, I decided to lower font sizes from the default size. Why did I do this?
For one reason: the site looked rubbish in every browser I tested on; and I wanted the site to look good.
That is the logic behind nearly every designers choice to lower body font sizes. It just doesn't look good with line after line of the default font size. Accessiblity and usability can go hang... it just doesn't look good!
Dirk Knemeyer recently published an article for Digital Web Magazine, called The End of Usability Culture, in which he claimed that the age of usability driven design was over. Although his argument was based on more general principals of design, in terms of font sizing his point is demonstrated very well indeed. Designers are reducing the level of usability in exchange for increased typographical control. In the same way as some designers set font sizes in pixels (despite their inaccessiblity in IE/Win), the bulk of desingers have decided that the pros of font size control outweigh the cons of reduced accessiblity.
A new default size
Downsized body text is so common on the web these days that we have gone too far to ever correct the problem. Users expect to see their default font size looking smaller than it is set in their browsers - whether they aware of the fact or not. Designers have forced a new default themselves by being so adamant that they want it smaller. It is now the norm for text to be set at anywhere between 70% and 80% for the <body> element and then other font sizes for title, etc, scaled from that base size.
As for users that want to see text larger, they will have figured out how to change the default on their machine and are probably browsing away happily as we speak. So it's not all bad news, and although it is still not an ideal situation, the issue has settled a lot over the last few years. Designers have defninitely beaten the usability purists over the issue of font sizes. It is rare that you come across sites with default sized body text, and what's more, my use of text-zoom is deployed only very late at night to reduce eye strain - so we must be getting something right!
Whether the purists like it or not, downsized body text is here to stay, and as designers we should no longer feel ashamed about our wish to present text at the size we want.
Comments:
I don't read books with 16px (or its print equivalent) text, so why read such large web text?
I settled on css "font-size: small;" on my documents. Then I use EM's as my measurement to layout the page or change fonts. This way the font is slightly smaller, but a user can change it (bigger or smaller) and the layout will not break, but also expand or shrink.
I've been using the 76% method for some time now, and I think it's a viable solution that prevents layout breakage while allowing users to resize text.
I think reducing the base font size of your pages works well for delivering your intended design to the (and this is just baseless speculation) large proportion of web users who have no idea what a default font size is, let alone how to change it.
The users savvy enough to lower their default font size are savvy enough to increase it again if they want to.
But I think it would be nice if browsers could include functionality to set default font sizes on a per domain basis. I've seen a few sites including this functionality via cookies, but once you wipe your cookies, that's it.
If writers had to read their articles through the same medium as the readers there would be a lot more consistency. The reason books have come to a standard size(9pt-10pt) is because the typesetters read the books.
In blogs or other web pusblishing environments the editor reads and edits in a rich text field whereas the average user reads through html.
Whether or not to lower the font size depends on which font you use, surely? We use Verdana on our office site, and it looks HUGE at the default size, so we shrunk it to 83%. Now it looks pretty enough (if you can call Verdana pretty), and users can still resize it if they need to.
For my blog I use Georgia at 100%. I haven't had any complaints about that being too large.
As long as the size can be changed (and remember IE/Win can only go +/- 2 steps) everything should be fine. But it should be possible to control with the browser's control, not requiring JavaScript or cookies (although you'll need cookies for persistence).
Tommy,
Agreed for sure. If you like a certain font size at 100% then use it. The crux of this article is that designers should be able to lower sizes if they want to.
The interesting thing about your Georgia point however, is that if users <strong>were</strong> lowering their defaults to read the likes of Verdana and Arial set at 100%, you're 100% Georgia would most likely be too small for them!
For the most part, I believe that the issue of default size on the web is an issue of scrolling and printing. As a designer, you should think about finding a balance between making the user scroll through a 10,000 pixel long page and making them squint. A 16 pt font default makes practically every web page scroll too long. But an 8 point flash pixel font in all caps is migraine-inducing, so somewhere between 10-12 point seems to fit well, depending on the design. You also don't want to waste 100 pages of printer paper if a user prints your web page (rare, yes, but stilll . . . )
I started reading this article, until the "a Bush without war" part. Then I started wondering what kind of person would include something like that in an article about typography, and then I started thinking about how people will do anything to feel like they are part of a bandwagon. Next thing I knew, I lost interest in this article. However, I did bookmark it for reading in the future when I'm not so easily distracted by inane writings.
Andrew, you're right. As long as the text can be resized by the user, there's no problem. Those who would find my Georgia text too small can easily enlarge it.
And I, for one, really liked the "a Bush without war" part. :)
Dr. William James is credited to have said several generations ago: "Nothing is so absurd that if you repeat it enough, people will believe it."
I believe the intended meaning of this statement fairly describes the statement above "most people will find the default size too large". I've yet to see anyone produce credible statistics to back up that statement. It probably is true for the population of web designers though, though here too as the professionals we assume they all are they are probably not sitting at the smallest of display sizes all day doing their work. When I ask, I typically find they are using larger than average displays.
One of the most, if not the most, frequently duplicated bugs on bugzilla.mozilla.org is that text zoom is not remembered (bug 65571 and some similar bugs considered not to be duplicates of it). In other words, users go to a site with smaller fonts, use zoom to compensate, leave the site or close the browser, then come back only to find the fonts are too small again. Rarely in those bugs does anyone claim that on return the fonts are too big again.
I think it's a pretty safe bet few would disagree that 16px is really big at 640x480, even on a really small display, and almost as many would agree at 800x600 16px is too big. But, at least half of users are using resolutions higher than those. I find it hard to believe that a great proportion of users of high resolutions, particularly those using the typically small laptop displays, wouldn't find 16px too small, and change it to something else on discovering that was an option. IOW, without context, you can't know how big 16px, or any other setting as the default, is "too big", or anything else. The point here is that in spite of the CSS spec claim that px is a relative size, that relativity has no relevance to text "sizing" issues relating to physical size, and is therefore never appropriate for sizing text. That then leaves only relative sizing.
The fact is, any attempt using relative sizing to change from the default, which in the absence of some really fancy JS gymnastics is unknowable, is absurd on its face. First, you don't know the resolution or the display size, notwithstanding that you can't know whether the original 16px setting remains in place. So, you know neither how big it would have been nor how big you're making it. This is why I find it so hard to understand developers' insistence on retaining the default browser defaults when designing rather than setting defaults appropriate to their personal tastes, as would and should knowing users, before designing. So many physical size combinations are now possible that the only logical and considerate method can be to assume the user knows how and has set his suitably, even though we know or assume many don't and accomodate & respect the decisions of those that do.
Justice will eventually prevail. It always does given enough time. That justice will find all <em>user agents</em> automatically configured to meet the needs of the <em>user</em>, overriding any site mechanisms designed to render anything outside constraints defined by the user, or his hardware.
We've already seen the beginning of it. Opera has something like user mode. Everything except IE has zoom. Even IE, crude and difficult to find and use as it is, allows site color and font settings to be ignored, and even allows a user stylesheet to be engaged and disengaged without browser restart. The next Firefox and Mozilla point releases will have the @-moz-document rule (already in trunk nightlies around 3 months now), and FF already has a switch to turn off the author stylesheet. Mozilla bug 108391 when fixed will remember zoom settings on a site by site basis. Mozilla bug 24846 when fixed will make it apparent to users that there is a preference that they can set. So, there remains hope for justice for the users that designers are ostensibly trying to attract and keep.
c'mon guys, use FIREFOX and adjust your text size.
I think there has been a slight "missing of the point" going on here! I think that Patrick up top there has got it in a nutshell. As a designer your job is 1) to get accross a message or information THEN 2) make it look nice. Most designers tackle their briefs from the wrong end! By imposing font sizes we ostracise users who can not read smaller fonts. I admit that I'm just as guilty - my prefered size is 12px although I have recently started to use em's and/or %!!!
However whilst reading articles or large volumes of copy, especially on screen larger type is easier and less straining on the old eyeballs - imagine what it's like is you only have 60% vision. So I'm a hypocrite right?
While I agree that this is a tricky problem to find a good solution to, Firefox already has the perfect fix for it: allowing all text to be resizable, setting a default font size, and also setting a minimum font size that no text will ever appear smaller than.
The simple fact is that out-of-the-box Internet Explorer is an absolutely awful browser for people with requirements such as larger text and user style sheets, which is why such people need to be encouraged to switch to a better browser.
I used to regard pixel font sizes as "evil", but it's actually not the pixel font sizing that is bad, just Internet Explorer's handling of them - maybe correct, but bad for accessibility (although this may have changed since I last really used IE). I do regard pixel font sizes as nonsensical, since if you can resize pixels (like good browsers allow you to) then they aren't pixels, hence are rather useless as a unit of measurement, and make about as much sense on screen as using points does.
Ultimately, what we as web designers and developers need to get used to is the idea that we really don't have the final say about how our pages are displayed on a user's machine. We can try and control it as much as possible, and suggest a look that is probably OK for "most people", but the truth is we're rendering a page on someone else's turf, so we have to play by their rules.
If a user is determined enough to override our settings, then they will do, whatever we've specified in our CSS. Still, such users will no doubt be used to some designs breaking with their settings, so my guess is it's probably not too much of a problem as long as we make sites that can adapt OK to a suitable range of font sizes.
Eventually, I'd like to be using size keywords, but for now I use body text at 100.01% (counters a few bugs in different browsers with plain old 100% or 100.1%) and set my smallest text to 76% or larger. Seems to work pretty well all-round, allowing IE to resize it and having greater meaning than using pixels (which are meaningless when resized in non-IE browsers).
Another important consideration is that this certainly isn't a "one rule fits all" scenario. Sometimes I'm asked by certain designers to use pixel font sizes on sites where the design is particularly important, and although I resisted this to begin with, I'm beginning to see their point of view. You have to consider what you use on a site-by-site basis, and use your judgement as to what is the best solution in each case.
The battle is far from won, but it's a semi-victory if we admit there still isn't a perfect solution, but continue to think about the methods we use.
Cheers! :D
I'm hearing a number of comments about how Firefox does wonderful things for typographical control. That's great.
Now if someone could just point me to a version of Firefox that runs under MacOS 9, I'd be satisfied.
I believe we're thinking mostly along the same lines here Darrel.
I certainly would want to keep font sizes to 100%, but the fact is that these days it's just not practical for most situations.
<em>"The ultimate fix would be for browsers, upon first launch, to ask the person ‘WHAT DEFAULT FONT SIZE WOULD YOU LIKE TO USE?’"</em>
Nice idea, but if everyone wanted to reduce their font size then our 80% setting would be in trouble, right? If this had happened 5 years ago we may well have avoided this whole sticky problem.
Good article. Font sizing is a catch 22 right now. Either you please folks that DO have a preferred font sizing set in their browser (by setting the pages default text to 100%), or you please those that have no idea how to do that and set the body text at a more readable smaller-than-default size (like 80%).
Ideally, IMHO, you set the size to that more readable 80%, and then give people a font-resizer widget on the site's pages.
<em>I believe the intended meaning of this statement fairly describes the statement above "most people will find the default size too large". I've yet to see anyone produce credible statistics to back up that statement.</em>
I agree, that often these are wild assumptions and rarely fully user-tested to the point where we have valid stats.
That said, pick up a newspaper and hold it in front of you at your normal news-paper reading distance. Now move it in front of your monitor. You'll notice that the type in the paper (typically in the 9pt range) tends to fall into that same 10-12 px range on screen. That, obviously, is not scientific in any shape or form...just yet another observation.
I'm a huge fan of accessibility, and really want to just set all my type at 100%, but when I do, I still get complaints about it being too big. Of course, with type, it's probably OK to err on the side of 'too big' than 'too small'...but it does need to be noted that type too large can be a hindrance as well for some folks.
The ultimate fix would be for browsers, upon first launch, to ask the person 'WHAT DEFAULT FONT SIZE WOULD YOU LIKE TO USE?'
<em>Nice idea, but if everyone wanted to reduce their font size then our 80% setting would be in trouble, right?</em>
Right, hence comments like Felix's. Again, catch-22. ;o)
I am 100% for accessibility, but I don't think we should be shy of
reducing the default font size -- by a little. Readability is the
criterion.
The default is intended as a default -- to make an un-styled line of
text readable, even at long line-lengths in a typeface that isn't
particularly legible onscreen. Browsers also throw in a little extra
line-height by default.
But if you make shorter lines, add more line-height, and specify a
more legible-on-screen typeface, a smaller font size will be as
readable as the default size/line-height in some version of Times
Roman (which was generally the default back when they picked 16
pixels).
And if a given text size is readable for lines of body text,
individual words -- as in navbars -- can be smaller and still be as
readable as the body text.
People who want unstyled text to be smaller could put body {font-size:
small} in their user stylesheet. Designers using relative font-sizes
could start with body {font-size: medium !important}. People who need
larger type could use body {font-size: large !important}.
It all goes back to the same old argument. Should we have larger text, so visually impaired users (5%?) can read the webpage more easily, or should we have smaller text, so the rest of the visitors (95%?) feel more comfortable reading the webpage.
Ah good old Felix and his user style sheets. Felix writes as if the entire Web is broken, when of the reality and practicality of the situation is that it simply isn't. Perhaps if Felix allowed himself more precise control with a rule like body {font-size: 16px !important;} he would have fewer issues.
Importantly, as professional designers, we simply wouldn't get paid by clients if we tried to give them websites with body text sized at 16px - there's no way they would sign off the design. We are now tending towards 14px rather 12px but that still causes the occasional bit of consternation.
And true, Internet Explorer will only step up text sizes by two notches, but any reader who genuinely needs more than extra large text will almost certainly be using some other assistive device to enable him or her to use the rest of their operating system.
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On 9 Dec 04
Jared said:
I don’t read books with 16px (or its print equivalent) text, so why read such large web text?