Question about screen resolutions and CSS
-
I’ve recently tested my blog on a new notebook (a new MacBook Air, but it doesn’t make any difference to my question which piece of hardware I’m using).
Here’s my question.
As so often when you upgrade your hardware, an improved screen resolution suddenly makes your site look too SMALL.
Solution? You can change the font settings in your browser preferences. But a) that will only correct things for you, not for other users. And b) it might make other sites look too big. Basically, nobody does this. They live with the default settings.
Or you can zoom – which addresses the problem even more superficially.
In reality, what you do is go with the flow and WAIT FOR WEBSITES to adjust or redesign themselves so that they look good, i.e. big enough, on current screens. They all make these adjustments periodically. But how does that work with a WP.com blog using one of the standard templates?? Is the way the blog displays eventually going to adjusted at the WP end OR DO YOU HAVE TO DO IT YOURSELF by tinkering with the CSS?
Does that question make any sense? I care about how my blog displays. Curious how this works.
Thanks.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
All any theme designer can do is shoot for a middle ground when sizing text on a theme. For those with lower resolutions, the text will be big. For those with higher resolutions, the text will be smaller. The problem is that there are so many different monitors and so many different resolutions out there. There are ways, with self-hosted blogs and a good level of knowledge of javascript and coding to query the users system and get the resolution, and then based on that set a base font size, but not all systems will report that information, so they you are back to guessing or trying to hit a middle ground. In the stats on my own self-hosted blog, 40% of the visitor’s systems never report monitor resolution, so with 40% of my visitors, I would have to guess. Then on top of that you have to query the browser to see what zoom level it is set at and what it has set as a minimum font size, then you have to toss all those into a hat and pull out some sort of rabbit.
With CSS you can certainly increase the font size, but there are so many variables to consider.
At some point the accessibility laws are going to start being enforced and when that happens, then sites will have to have font increase and decrease buttons right on the theme itself, but no one knows when that is going to happen.
-
The thing is though, it is NOT monitor resolution, but the eyes of the visitor that has to judge whether text is too big or too small. People with impaired vision will want it larger than people with good vision even if they are viewing on the exact same system, and then there are those with good eyesight that still prefer larger text.
It is more of a predicament than it is a problem really.
-
True, thanks, and understood. I guess the question comes down to — if I do nothing and just sit back, is WP in all likelihood going to catch up anyway at some point by resizing text?
Or is the onus on me to do this by modifying the blog?
This is my basic question.
-
-
I doubt there will be any adjustments unless the dot-pitch makes a quantum leap further toward zero.
- The topic ‘Question about screen resolutions and CSS’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 