Raf256 said:
Current idea of system/page is, that default page will start with 14
px font.
The idea is wrong. Simply wrong. It means that the site will _begin_
communication with the user by arguing with his choice of the font size.
Really. Maybe he just chose it out of ignorance, since he didn't know the
font size can be changes. It could well be wrong, or suboptimal, for him.
It's still his choice, and it's up to him to change it.
And on top of page (so that voice-reading-browsers will read
it first) will be something like "If You have problems reading this
page YOu can see bigger font, or YOu are viewing page via
PDA/palmtop/etc, or are vision impared - click here" (or something
like that nicer written).
Worse than pointless. Much worse.
First, you will be imitated by authors who implement the wrong idea much
worse.
Second, it addresses the font issue at a wrong level - at a level where
it can never be solved, just messed up.
Third, it gets into technicalities _first_. Even if you aren't selling
anything, it's better to start with something else than discussing the
user's browser settings (unless your site is really for helping people
with such settings).
Fourth, it contains terms and abbreviations that are not known by
billions of people, for no good reason. Why should a user stop wondering
whether his PC is "PDA" or whether he is "vision impared"?
Then anyone can choose:
( ) 14 px
(*) 16 px
( ) 18 px
( ) em-based settings
( ) em-based settings large
( ) em-based settings X-large
Again, worse than pointless. Billions of people don't know what "px" is,
and fairly few people know what it _really_ means. They are used to other
measures of font size, or none. And "em-based settings" is just gibberish
to most people, and _very_ few people know what "em" really is.
(*) PL Polish
( ) EN English
This is quite different, and should be handled differently. In any robust
design of a bilingual site, the main page indeed has a language
selection, but it's _links_, not radio buttons. It is very confusing to
mix language selection with presentational preferences. And you can make
language selection automatic, see
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/multi/
though this should not be relied upon but only treated as extra
convenience.
[ ] high color contrast (for daltonists, or black-white media,
printers) [ ] printer-optimised version (no big images, no
backgrounds)
Pointless. Use @media print { ... } in a style sheet, and let people
using special devices live with what their browsers get - making as much
sense out of the markup as they can. (They will often ignore any CSS you
have.)
this settings will be stored in cookies (or maybe some even more
comfortable settings-saving system will be used)
Then you would _need_ to have a description of the use of cookies on the
site. This is a requirement in a EU directive - it's not just good
manners:
<
http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Seek-Deliver;
COLLECTION=lif;SERVICE=all;LANGUAGE=en;DOCID=302L0058>
And, in turn, any such description will confuse a large number of people.
So everyone should be heapy,
I'm afraid so.
