Text And Zoom
If you have used IE7 or Firefox 3 lately, and have tried to increase the text size on a page you are looking at, you have noticed that the browser not only increases the text size, it increases everything. This is page zoom, and just about every modern browser now does it, except Safari.
In older browsers, like IE6 and Firefox 2 (and pretty much anything that came before them), when you wanted to increase the size of text on a page, that is exactly what the browser did - it increased the text size. The only problem was, it didn’t increase everything else. So at some point you would end up with a broken layout (the most common was the last item of a horizontal menu bumping down to the next line). The exception to the rule was Opera. They have implemented page zoom for a while now.
Another kink in this equation is that IE did not support the scaling of text sized with pixels until very recent. So various methods were developed to accurately size text and still allow it to scale, especially in IE since it is the most popular browser. Everyone seems to have their favorite method and there are pros and cons to all of them. (I personally use the 62.5% method).
So a discussion has started now about how much longer these methods should be used. Dave Shea published a post talking about this issue saying that the introduction of page zoom as the default “zooming” action in most modern browsers takes “the responsibility for ensuring page integrity and legibility is moved out of the designer’s hands, and placed fully on the browser.”
Dave was only opening up discussion on the subject without stating his personal preference. Jeff Croft has joined in on the discussion as well. Steve Smith over at Ordered List has already declared pixel font sizes safe to use once again.
How will using pixels as a sizing method affect the accessiblity of a site? Should we be delivering different methods based on which browser someone is using or just go all out with pixels?
October 9th, 2008
I’d say, just go pixels, and be done with it. :)