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0 pointsori_b13y ago0 comments

The alternative is having sites select fonts that hurt my eyes. I want a consistent experience across the web.

0 comments

That's like wanting all cars on the road to be red :)

ori_bOP13y ago

No. It's like expecting that when I adjust my seat to fit my leg length, the doors still work. I like the text to be readable without me leaning in and destroying my vision.

The fact that I'm forced to override font sizes for usability because sites don't respect my default settings is bad enough. When they break because of it, it becomes terrible design.

Nitramp13y ago

+1 on the font size - that's a big problem in particular if you happen to have a large screen.

But forcing everything into the same font seems a bit excessive; I've actually seen a couple of sites make really nice use of fonts, and you can still install an extension that turns your page into an "easy reading" mode on a key press.

What do you do about fixed width vs proportional fonts?

3 more replies

ianstormtaylor13y ago

Sorry but seeing as Chrome remembers which sites you zoomed in on every time you go back to them, font-size isn't a good argument for completely changing the font on websites.

You have to click Cmd-+ once in a while to zoom in on pages that are made by idiots.

Karn13y ago

I agree wholeheartedly. I have a solution that I've been using for years - a stylesheet that overrides everything. I just got tired of having to adjust to different fonts and color schemes for each website. After years of using computers for 8+ hours a day I have settled on the perfect (for me) combination of color, contrast, font styles and sizes, button styles, link styles, etc., and that's what I want to see. If that's not enough I have a Scriptish script that formats any page to my specification with a keypress.

I actually think this is the future of browsing (at least for people who do a lot of reading in-browser). Books that used non-standard fonts and colors would be laughed at (say, Papyrus on a beige background for body text), but just because it's easy to go wild with websites doesn't mean people should do it.

latortuga13y ago

It's more like expecting all cars to be narrow enough to fit in lanes or expecting all cars to have turn signals and brake lights. Type face has a huge impact on how readable text is, car color has almost zero impact on my ability to drive.

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