Since I focus more on the business strategy for websites, I don’t often go into specific techniques. But, following standards has terrific strategic benefits, too. I feel a post coming on…

Having said all that, I can’t completely agree with your comment. While you’re absolutely right that users can change font sizes – assuming your web design uses the outstanding techniques you outlined – I suspect most consumers don’t know how to do what you suggest. Sure, I do. But I do this for a living. And, at 40, find I need things to display larger than what most web designers seem to think is “large enough.” Also, 12-point appears as different sizes depending on the chosen font. For instance, I find Arial perfectly readable without glasses at 12 point. But 12pt Times New Roman is a bit difficult. And I’m still (relatively) young. My 77-year old father (Hi, Dad!) might struggle more.

You may laugh today. But, trust me grasshopper. Your day will come.

Finally, I’m glad you mention em-based design. The Ikea example is very cool.

So, let’s compromise. Use a larger font and use standards so your users can grow – or shrink – the size to suit their needs.

FYI… note Jakob Nielsen’s thoughts on font size from way-back in 2002. Well worth the read.

Thanks again for the thought-provoking comment, Ryan. And look forward to some future thoughts on this.

Great blog post! I have to agree with most of what you are saying, although must argue with you a bit and wouldn’t mind tacking some more on.

Going into my ninth year as a web developer I have realized that things have changed drastically from when I started, to where we are now, and to where we are going. The biggest thing in my book is web standards (good book by http://www.simplebits.com if interested). The grasp they have on the web these days is fantastic and the efforts and groups working towards achieving true standards are growing rapidly.

Reason I introduce Web Standards here is to argue with one of your points, and introduce a new one. What I wish to argue is increasing the font size: user’s should have the most control. In all reality the font-size that is set by the designer has no meaning. Most browsers have an option to override any font-size and even set its own default overriding font. What should happen here is a happy medium deal, let me explain:

In the design process (while in Photoshop or whatnot) the designer should consider nothing smaller than a 12-point font. 12-point is the most common font size to use and what most people are going to be familiar with. On your site, having two links (or small buttons) with an A- and A+ to allow the user to increase font-size with Javascript (without CTRL+ or APPL+) is ideal to conform to general standards and would have even the slightest effect on revenue generated from a website.

My second point here rides along with the entire font-size idea, although it is a more-recent industry boom: the em-based design. If you are unfamiliar, an em-based design has a px defined size replaced with an em defined size. This allows the user to use CTRL+ or APPL+ to increase the text-size AND the size of all of the elements (block or not) on the page. This means increasing font-size won’t break the page nor will it look just outright stupid. A more-recent major em-based redesign can be seen at http://ikea.com/ . Use your CTRL+ or APPL+ on their design and see what happens. Then compare that to what happens over at http://cnn.com/ .

Overall great article though, and I hope to see more like this. You’re now in my blogroll. =)

Best,
Ryan Barr
Spooky