#246: fedora.css sets a universal scaling factor of 76%, which is much too small
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Reporter: adamwill | Owner: webmaster
Type: defect | Status: new
Priority: major | Milestone:
Component: General | Keywords: css font size
Blocked By: | Blocking:
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fedora.css, which all Fedora websites are encouraged to use, has this
right at the top:
body
{
font-size: 76%;
background: #FFFFFF url(../images/border-left.png) 0 0 repeat-y;
}
It's been there for years, since before the stuff was imported to git, so
its history may be obscure at this point, but Googling around, it looks
like 76% was considered a 'rule' by some so-called authorities at some
point. http://www.sitepoint.com/css-font-sizing-tutorial/ has mention of
it in the comments, http://forums.modx.com/thread/?thread=17583 has some
chatter about it, http://www.baekdal.com/insights/new-minimum-font-size is
from 2005 and cites 76% as the new *minimum* recommended font size, etc.
I think it's pretty unarguably too small for the modern day, though.
Taking the standard 'base size' for browsers - 16px - and using the 96dpi
convention, text at '76%' is 12.16px in size, which is equivalent to 9pt.
How many people do you know who have their desktops set to a 9pt font on a
modern system? Particularly a modern *laptop*. Reading text on Fedora
sites on most systems without zooming or overriding the CSS or setting a
large minimum px size in your browser (which is undesirable for other
reasons) is a pretty tiring experience even for me, and I still have
effectively perfect eyesight for reading text; it must be more or less
impossible for anyone with somewhat less than perfect eyesight.
Yes, this is the thing Felix Miata is always banging on about, but you
know what? Now I spent a day actually looking into this stuff, he's
absolutely damn right. Sorry, Felix. I hope this post was calm and
reasonable enough and brought enough numbers. :)
--
Ticket URL: <https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-websites/ticket/246>
fedora-websites <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Websites>
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