Mar 23 2007 at 10:57am
Can we Stop it With the Tiny Text Already?
I was starting to think this trend was over, but then I came across a couple of sites today that have some of the worst cases of tiny text I’ve encountered in quite awhile.
Please, stop making your font sizes so miniscule that nobody can read them properly! I could increase my font size in my browser (zoom in in Opera) but you shouldn’t have to make me do that. It’s annoying and I’m lazy. For many sites I’ve even had to build user stylesheets just so I don’t have to keep increasing the font size every time I visit. My opinion is that font sizes should always be set just a little bit smaller than the browser default size (between 80-90% of normal, depending on the typeface. Both of the examples linked above use Trebuchet, which needs to be bigger). This works well for a normal range of screen resolutions. If people like them larger or smaller they can change their browser preferences.
Even the W3C agrees with me.
So quit it 
(Just as I was posting this I came across a post on YouMoz demonstrating that when tested, page views actually increased when the font size was set a little larger. This site was targetting seniors but I think the same could be true for other age groups as well.)
Christopher Jaquez March 23rd, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Agree with you totally here! This is another terrible example from someone who ought to know better. It used to be worse, since the articles linked to used the same font size as the summaries. I have great eyesight and even I am frustrated by this.
Liam McDermott March 23rd, 2007 at 4:18 pm
*sigh* tiny text: ruining my eyesight, one web site at a time.
That site you pointed out has got tiny text Christopher, not that I’d want to read the content of a site called: WindowsITPro!
Catarina March 24th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
I noted that fonts are smaller on Opera than Firefox or IE. I don’t know why and it bothers me. I like FF’s way of increasing font size with ctrl+ and I’ve used it many times, especially when my eyes are tired. I’m still young but some websites are simply impossible to read for long periods of time.
The other day I found this design agency (they must be great…) from my country. Tiny gray letters on a white background and no way of increasing text size because it’s a flash site. I just hope they don’t make the same mistakes on their clients’ websites.
I’m on a 13,3″/1280×800 laptop, so I’m used to small stuff. But there’s small and there’s tiny. Tiny is painful.
andyk March 27th, 2007 at 6:59 am
You know what annoys me…? it’s no so much the font size (although anything smaller than approx. 11px drives me nuts) - it’s line height. Small text is a lot easier to read if the spacing between is larger than default.
More space between lines (and to some extent paragraphs) prevents the lines from merging into one another which then makes it easier to read a line, yet very few designers ever bother to change from the default line height.
Also… really wide pages annoy me as well. If you’re going to use relative widths for design you need to make sure you still set a max-width on content to ensure it doesn’t run out to crazy line lengths on larger screens.
Megan March 27th, 2007 at 10:30 am
That’s a good point too, Andy. I’m starting to work on refining my line lengths beased on this article from Richard Rutter at 24 Ways.