You want to see small text on a website?

[Mike Barnard]

Then look at this... with a magnifying glass!

http://lexingtoninstitute.org/1240.shtml

 

[SAZ]

Then look at this... with a magnifying glass!

http://lexingtoninstitute.org/1240.shtml

It's small, but not horribly small. I've seen several news sites use
the same font and size.

 

[cwdjrxyz]

Then look at this... with a magnifying glass!

http://lexingtoninstitute.org/1240.shtml

I can read the text, but I would not like to have to read it all day,
especially on a small screen or a monitor that is a bit out of
adjustment. I took a glance at the external style sheet. Much of the
font-size is 10 px. I did note one or two cases of font-size specified
in points, with the lowest I saw was 7.5 pt.

That text is not nearly as small as it can be. You should see a period
specified as font-size of 1 px. In fact I used that a bit a few years
ago. If you want to draw a colored bar somewhere on a page, you can do
so using a division with background-color for it specified. Back then,
and perhaps still, for some browsers the division had to have some
content for this to work. A 1 px period in the division is all it took
to have content in the division, and it is not noticed by most people.
However if you specify the text color for the division about the same
as the background color, then the period can not be seen even if you
know exactly where it should be.

 

[C A Upsdell]

Then look at this... with a magnifying glass!

http://lexingtoninstitute.org/1240.shtml

One of the problems is that the first font in the font-family list is
Verdana, which is well known to be harder to read in small sizes. The
designer clearly has not learned this.

 

[dorayme]

Verdana, ... is well known to be harder to read in small sizes

It is?

 

[Mike Barnard]

It is?

Hehe, have I (re)started the war about verdana?

 

[Toby A Inkster]

One of the problems is that the first font in the font-family list is
Verdana, which is well known to be harder to read in small sizes. The
designer clearly has not learned this.

No, the problem is that Verdana is well-known to be *easy* to read as
small sizes, which encourages designers to use tiny text "because it's in
Verdana", forgetting that it might *not* be in Verdana on some computers.

(e.g. they have a user stylesheet which overrides the author's font
choice, or they don't have the font installed.)

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 1 day, 13:31.]

The Semantic Web
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/03/09/sw/

 

[dorayme]

Hehe, have I (re)started the war about verdana?

I doubt it. CA has it wrong, simple as that.

 

[C A Upsdell]

It is?

Arrghhh! Brain freeze. Yes, I had it backwards.

 

[Harlan Messinger]

It is?

Certainly not. The whole problem with Verdana is that no matter whether
you declare its size to be 0.1pt or 150% or 4ex, it's drawn half a meter
high!

 

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

One of the problems is that the first font in the font-family list is
Verdana, which is well known to be harder to read in small sizes. The
designer clearly has not learned this.

It is exactly the opposite; Verdana is larger than other fonts for
the same point size, and therefore more legible than other fonts
when it is reduced.

The problem is using a font-size other than 100%.