On 4/23/2014 10:02 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On the contrary, I find almost all websites have broken layouts because
> I enforce a minimal font size of 16pt (I have a high-resolution screen)
> -- they insist on font sizes that are far too small.

This is why teams need some old codgers like me around. We don't see so good anymore, and need larger fonts.

The teeny-tiny fonts all come from people under 25 :-)


Ironically, the most unreadable web pages I've seen were on apple.com. Haven't looked at it recently, but they'd use a tiny font, and make it light gray letters on a white background. It was literally painful to try and read it.

The current winnah for unreadable text goes to meld Ubuntu 13.10. For some wretched reason, 'meld' under the new Ubuntu uses a font where the letters are about one pixel wide meaning it's nearly impossible to even see the colored text.

Some day I'm going to pull a tape measure between my eyes and my monitor, and get some glasses optimized for that distance.

On Wednesday, 23 April 2014 at 16:13:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> So I'd dlang.org to foster a behavior depending on the available real estate, as follows:
>
> * Cap cpl at e.g. 110 on very large screens.
>
> * As the available width decreases, reduce cpl up to 60.
>
> * If cpl with sidebar falls below 60, remove the sidebar and obtain e.g. 80 cpl.
>
> * As the available width reduces further, allow reduction down to e.g. 35 cpl, and then require horizontal scrolling.

At some point you'll probably realize that the term "cpl" is not particularly meaningful in this context because:

1. you don't use a monofont and have to figure out what "cpl" is in "em" or "rem".

2. adults detect phrases, not characters, so any measurements are done on the wrong unit anyway.

3. quantitative human factors studies that go beyond your inate capabilites tend to be full of severe methodological flaws.

Waste of time.

On 4/23/2014 2:12 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/23/2014 10:02 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On the contrary, I find almost all websites have broken layouts because
>> I enforce a minimal font size of 16pt (I have a high-resolution screen)
>> -- they insist on font sizes that are far too small.
>
> This is why teams need some old codgers like me around. We don't see so
> good anymore, and need larger fonts.
>
> The teeny-tiny fonts all come from people under 25 :-)
>

I certainly won't disagree that small fonts can be hard to read, but on the other end, I've seen a lot of newer websites with gigantic fonts, and I find that painful to read as well.

>
> Ironically, the most unreadable web pages I've seen were on apple.com.
> Haven't looked at it recently, but they'd use a tiny font, and make it
> light gray letters on a white background. It was literally painful to
> try and read it.

Grey-on-white is ridiculously common and should be jailable offense. I'll never understand the the reasoning behind that readability destroyer.

On 4/23/2014 9:11 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Tuesday, 22 April 2014 at 23:45:43 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>> Wow, this looks really nice! It has variables, mixins, nested
>> selectors and includes.. That's all I need!
>
> Yea, I wrote this several years ago before even knowing about sass based
> on what annoyed me about CSS and it looks like me and the sass people
> had a lot of the same complaints because our results are almost
> compatible. I think sass does a better job with calculations but meh, I
> just use box-sizing: border-box and then I don't care as much about
> calculations anymore anyway!
>

"box-sizing: border-box" is proof of what I've said all along: Microsoft got the box model right in old IEs, and W3C got it wrong.

On 4/23/2014 2:47 AM, Martin Nowak wrote:
>> Eww. Font size and image scaling should *not* be a function of window
>> size. That's just...yuck. Let the system determine it's own
>> appropriate base font size.
>>
>> And it's all in that horrible, ugly, "giant sized, yet minimal content
>> and maximal blank space" style that's so inexplicably popular with the
>> latest batches of web startups.
>>
>> *shudder*
>
> Yeah, let's have a page like Peter Norvig (http://norvig.com). It's all
> about the content after all and if that is good the rest doesn't matter.

I didn't say style was irrelevent. I only said that there should actually *be* content.

On Tuesday, 22 April 2014 at 23:08:45 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> I wrote a css expander that has a little bit of SASS features.
>
> Previously it was hidden in my html.d on my misc. github, but I just now made it a standalone program in a separate repo:
>
> https://github.com/adamdruppe/cssexpand
>
> Check out the demo input file
> https://github.com/adamdruppe/cssexpand/blob/master/demo/test.css
>
> and demo result file
> https://github.com/adamdruppe/cssexpand/blob/master/demo_result.css
>
> to get an idea of what it does.

This is awesome. I think I might try it out for my next web-dev contract. If it could be put on code.dlang.org that would be awesome.

I've always been tempted to use Sass or similar, but this seems like the simple tool I've actually wanted.

On 4/23/2014 2:34 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 23/04/14 00:57, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>
>> Apparently they can't even manage make basic links work properly:
>>
>> http://getbootstrap.com/examples/starter-template/
>>
>> How anyone can manage to fuck up <a href="...">...</a> is beyond me.
>
> What's fucked up with the links?
>

They don't work.

But...maybe they're only intended to be single-page-only examples? (Now that I think about it...)

If so, then I must have misunderstood the examples. The fact that they're all pointing to different anchor links threw me off and made me assume they were supposed to be functional. (I'm accustomed to blank zero-length anchors being used to indicate "intentionally non-functional placeholder link".)

But I have noticed a lot of the sites that use anchor links to switch to completely different pages are basically broken. Since the very *beginning* of HTML, links have always been downright trivial to implement, and have always been considerably *easier* to *not* require JS. It's pretty much the single simplest, easiest, most fundamental thing in HTML. And yet, more than a decade now after <a onclick="..."> linking inexplicably appeared, some people are *still* trying to implement links using JS. It's insane.

However, you'll have to pardon that little rant. When I posted that "Apparently they can't even manage make basic links work properly", I swear it wasn't my intention to do another JS-rant. Coming from me, JS rants are pretty much redundant at this point ;)

On 4/23/2014 5:55 PM, John Colvin wrote:
> On Tuesday, 22 April 2014 at 23:08:45 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
>> I wrote a css expander that has a little bit of SASS features.
>>
>> Previously it was hidden in my html.d on my misc. github, but I just
>> now made it a standalone program in a separate repo:
>>
>> https://github.com/adamdruppe/cssexpand
>>
>> Check out the demo input file
>> https://github.com/adamdruppe/cssexpand/blob/master/demo/test.css
>>
>> and demo result file
>> https://github.com/adamdruppe/cssexpand/blob/master/demo_result.css
>>
>> to get an idea of what it does.
>
> This is awesome. I think I might try it out for my next web-dev
> contract. If it could be put on code.dlang.org that would be awesome.
>
> I've always been tempted to use Sass or similar, but this seems like the
> simple tool I've actually wanted.

SCSS has always been more interesting to me than SASS, but yea, this seems to pretty much be an independently-developed equivalent to SCSS, which is pretty cool.

On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 05:32:00PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 4/23/2014 2:12 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> >On 4/23/2014 10:02 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> >>On the contrary, I find almost all websites have broken layouts because I enforce a minimal font size of 16pt (I have a high-resolution screen) -- they insist on font sizes that are far too small.
> >
> >This is why teams need some old codgers like me around. We don't see so good anymore, and need larger fonts.
> >
> >The teeny-tiny fonts all come from people under 25 :-)

I can still see relatively well, but I prefer not having to squint at the screen to read text on a webpage just because some clever web designer decided that 6pt fonts are a good idea. That's why I configured my browser to enforce a minimum font size of 14 pt (or was it 16pt?), regardless of what the stylesheet says. It's the only way I could even tolerate reading certain sites.


> I certainly won't disagree that small fonts can be hard to read, but on the other end, I've seen a lot of newer websites with gigantic fonts, and I find that painful to read as well.

Any examples?

Usually when I run into a site with (1) microscopic fonts, (2) giant
(often multicolored) fonts, (3) no whitespace, or (4) has more
ads/filler than content, my fingers have an almost instinctual ctrl-W
(close tab) response. Sometimes not even one word registers in my brain
before I move on to the next site.

In fact, I'm of the arrogant opinion that websites should not specify ANY font size except a relative size to the browser's default, because chances are, whatever size you choose will look horrible on *somebody*'s device. Browsers come with a default (and user-configurable!) font size for a reason. Web designers would be foolish to disregard that.


> >Ironically, the most unreadable web pages I've seen were on apple.com.  Haven't looked at it recently, but they'd use a tiny font, and make it light gray letters on a white background. It was literally painful to try and read it.
> 
> Grey-on-white is ridiculously common and should be jailable offense. I'll never understand the the reasoning behind that readability destroyer.

Worse yet, I've actually seen sites that use red on gray (or the other way round -- it's too painful to recall). Or lime on turqoise. Or any of various other horrible combinations. Aughh... my eyes hurt just thinking about it... On the bright side, most sites that pick such colors usually don't have any useful content to offer either, so the ctrl-W kneejerk (fingerjerk?) fixes the problem quite quickly.


T

-- 
"No, John.  I want formats that are actually useful, rather than over-featured megaliths that address all questions by piling on ridiculous internal links in forms which are hideously over-complex." -- Simon St. Laurent on xml-dev

On Wednesday, 23 April 2014 at 16:13:42 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 4/23/14, 3:13 AM, "Ola Fosheim Grøstad"
>
>> You don't understand that it is offensive to respond to an intelligent
>> question by posting a Google query? As a project maintainer you should
>> know better.
>
> As a project maintainer I try to foster good exchange of information. I found the link informative. -- Andrei

In most contexts that will be taken as a RTFM response, as in: «why didn't you search for this yourself?»