There's inevitably going to be some barracking going on here. Sorry
about this, and no offence meant, and I'm sure the Wiki is a nice idea
in itself, and all due respect to Nigel for starting it...
On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Walt Reed wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 05:14:55PM +0100, Nigel Metheringham said:
>
> > Do you have a minimum font size set in your browser?
Speaking for myself: "of course". Gotta do something to defeat the
popular deezyner habit of specifying microfonts. In my case, the
minimum is set to 14 pixels (on my 135dpi display), while my default
body size is set to a 16px sans font (not Verdana! [1]).
> > Are the left hand bar characters of similar size to the body text
> > (they are normally 0.7 the size of the body text).
aaaaargh, microfonts. [1]
> I sent you a partial screen shot in private mail. I did have minimum
> font of 13. Removing that solved the problem.
Correction: "replaced the problem with a different one". In my
browsing situation and with my eyesight, 13px is hard to read even
with optimal colour contrast.
> I can use the View /
> Increase Text Size option to increase text size to be readable again
> as an alternative. Wish there was a way to fix the minimum font size
> without causing other problems...
I can read it much better if I use the web designer toolbar to disable
styles. This in itself should sound a warning alert! (Of course,
disabling styles also disables the positioning, but c'est la vie).
> > Can anyone suggest to me a better way of setting the left hand bar size
> > in CSS other then pinning it to a specific pixel width
Almost any way of sizing the left hand bar size is better than
a specific pixel width! (Unless the content is itself inherently
pixel-sized, which isn't the case here).
But in all seriousness: why discuss web design questions on the exim
mailing list? If you can stand the noise from the sidelines, you rate
to get better answers about such matters from the usenet group
comp.infosystems.
www.authoring.stylesheets. In fact I'm sure you'll
find several recent threads discussing two- and three-column design
techniques using CSS, and suggesting web sites where the matter is
presented.
> > (which will hit other problems with fonts under or overflowing the
> > size allowed).
You're doing abolute positioning, which is always a potentially
fraught activity. There are more-resilient approaches.
Over and above that, you really should offer up the CSS to a syntax
checker such as the W3C's CSS "validator".
> > [For those using firefox who do the occasional bit of web work, look at
> > the amazing web developer extension which is great for diagnosing layout
> > problems - http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/ ]
Indeed. Works great with Mozilla too, and it's what I used to fire up
the HTML and CSS syntax checking.
all the best
[1] Design principle: 100% or 1.0em represents the reader's chosen
font size for normal text (i.e with normal-ish fonts in normal-ish
contrast situations). (If it looks too large, then they only have
themselves to blame for not configuring their browser appropriately.)
One size step below that (say, ~ 85%) will be somewhat more difficult
to read, but acceptable for some purposes. Two size steps (say, ~
70%) is acceptable only for text which has to be there for some formal
reason (legalese, whatever) but normal users aren't expected to
actually read it.
If you're proposing less-readable fonts, or inferior colour contrast
(in your case, white on a fairly bright blue background) then it's
even more important to avoid small text sizes, IMNSHO.
Well: having set out a position, I'll try not to get dragged any
further into an off-topic ramble. Hope to see you on the c.i.w.a.*
groups. (I'm currently a fan of the design musings that are presented
at
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/ ).
