Font size in pixels: a terrible Web design sin
OK, confession time. I have worked on Web apps that used CSS files that have font size defined in pixels. Most often this has not been my choice but something that came from a graphic designer. It drives me nuts when a graphic design is so rigid that it cannot support relative font sizes. In fact, it offends me as a user when I cannot adjust the text so I can read it comfortably. Such a design is, in fact, a bad design even if it is beautiful.
I have been more bothered than usual about fixed font size on the Web since I got my amazing, wonderful, amazing, beautiful, and amazingly practical Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC (yes, I like it a lot). My M200 has a fantastic 12 inch screen that runs at 1400 by 1050. I absolutely love the size and resolution, especially for developing, writing, or researching when I can really take advantage of all the screen real estate. But quite often I come across sites where the font is extremely hard to read. 9px might look OK at 1024x768 over 15" and at 1280x1024 over 17", but it's pretty hard to read from arm's length away on my high-res 12 inch screen. If the font is fixed, I'll move on.
I'm not the only one with this gripe. For that matter, I'm sure there are plenty of users like my mom who would move on even with relative fonts if the initial size is too small. With Internet Explorer on my tablet, 0.5em Arial is basically unreadable unless I enlarge the default text size. A great many users either will not know how or will not make the effort to enlarge the font unless they are already extremely committed to looking at your content. That does not bode well for broad audience sites, especially those looking to convert visitors into customers.
I admit that I have been guilty of not fighting hard enough against this design sin. Unfortunately on many projects it is somewhere between improbable to impossible to get the graphic design fixed after marketing and other executives have gone through a selection and approval process, especially when an expensive outside marketing or design firm was involved. Web developers are often not involved early enough in the process to provide parameters for the graphic design. Or perhaps we assume that a professional graphic designer might have some inkling about basic Web usability. Or perhaps we forget or neglect to address the issue early enough. Or perhaps, worst of all, we don't realize there is a problem or don't care. [Frankly I don't understand the "don't care" mentality as I take a great deal of pride in my work, but I acknowledge that there are folks out there just working to pay the mortgage. I just don't understand it.]
The great hypocrisy underlying this post is the Web site for my .NET consulting company. I fell in love with the graphic design and turned a blind eye to the fixed size fonts. Later on I experimented a little bit with relative fonts but the design did not look right and everyone had billable work to do so it ended up on the back burner. But soon all will be well. For several months I have been hatching a plan to turn www.ardentdev.com into a developer resource site featuring blog and article contributions from my most excellent development staff, including an "ask the experts" option that will let you pose a question to my dev team. We will do our best to answer your question in a future post or forward you on to someone who can answer it. Bookmark the site now and check back in September for the new design and content.