August 21, 2002
I'm tired of talking about font size control on the web. I really am. I don't bother to write about it here, mostly because I need a break from the monotony of rattling off spiel after spiel about font size. Follow me around for a few days and you'll want to throw yourself off a cliff rather than hear yet another polite-but-insistent rant. Still, I had to point out: Jakob Nielsen is actually saying something that I don't think is going overboard: Let Users Control Font Size.
You already knew this, of course: it should be easy for users to change the size of the font being displayed. It's not. Many, many users don't know how, or even that they can. And of course, those rare few using IE on Windows are screwed if the font size is specified in units like pixels or points. Nielson is calling on Microsoft to allow user preferences to override any font sizes specified in a document.
I went to Nielsen's site looking for hard data on users and font sizes, to try to convince the Powers That Be at ISEEK that their font sizes are too small. They believe buh-LEAVE! in Nielsen, you see (or perhaps you don't, depending on how closely you analyze the design). What do I find on the useit.com home page but this article. Yay. Unfortunately, it doesn't really make the argument I want to: the damn font size is too small.
The fact that users can change the displayed font size is beside the point: either they don't know how, or they can't. I've been using public internet access lately, in libraries, coffee shops, and so on. Quite often, font control is disabled. I don't know why, but there it is. Something tells me that if buttons were added to the toolbar, and the user could override the size of any font, we'd be better off.
With any luck at all, this will be the last you see me mention this.
