alt Hacker NewsWhile I'm on board with having good html structure that prints well, and I'm on board with hiding navigation elements, etc., I'm not so on board with changing the default font size or fonts in the print version.
I just made a simple site that didn't set any font sizes anywhere, and a friend of mine complained that the font was too small on mobile. Do I detect a lo-res screen and increase the font size?
I know a lot of sites do exactly that, but I feel it's wrong. The user controls their default font size on their platform. What if they'd already increased it, and now I'm just making it bigger?
What if they'd decreased their default print font size and then I shrink it again?
I think it's best to leave those to the user entirely.
Replies
While everyone probably should learn something about their devices, the defaults you provide to users should be good ones.
Drawing a line can be hard, but clearly the basic font should be contrast-y enough so that most people can read it, no? The user can control the defaults of many things on their devices, but we shouldn't require them to change settings to have a good experience. We already customize websites a lot.
I think it depends on the goals of the print version, but people spend a lot of time picking fonts and styles so things look good on a screen. I take this as saying you should supply the same type of attention to your print style sheet.
I had a professor who asked us to print source code for our projects for him to read. Looks like he's still at it. I'm sure he's being driven insane in these AI times.
You were right and your friend was wrong for not knowing how to increase font sizes on mobile. It’s actually an opportunity to teach them how to change page zoom levels in a browser. (I actually have the opposite problem: many sites make font sizes way too large and I often need to decrease zoom level.)
The only exception is that the layout of your website requires multiple columns so increasing either font size or page zoom doesn’t work well. For example gcc.gnu.org is challenging for a mobile browser if one prefers larger font sizes. You are fine if you aren’t doing that.
> I just made a simple site that didn't set any font sizes anywhere, and a friend of mine complained that the font was too small on mobile. Do I detect a lo-res screen and increase the font size?
Did you use
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
Absolutely, this is accessibility 101.
The one counter argument to this that I would accept is that users don't know about font settings. But the proper solution if for browsers to make it easier those settings rather than every single website having to add font controls.