Danbooru

Default font size

Posted under General

As you all have noticed already, new version of Danbooru uses considerably larger font size than the old version. I thought that this change was for the worse and made an issue at Github about it:

https://github.com/r888888888/danbooru/issues/469

But some people disagreed with me and suggested to make a forum thread to determine what majority thinks. So here it is.

Here are links to screenshots (made under 1024x768 resolution) of Danbooru 1 for comparison:
http://i48.tinypic.com/aoungo.jpg
http://i45.tinypic.com/x5b12c.jpg
http://i48.tinypic.com/2en5l36.jpg
http://i50.tinypic.com/35d9c3t.jpg

Updated by neosubmarino

Bumping the thread to get more opinions.

thebackup said:
There's always using your browser's zoom settings. But that affects the entire page, not only the text.

To quote myself from the issue at Github: "various browsers have different resizing algorithms, for example Opera resizes the whole page including images, not just text".
So I agree, browser's zoom function can be used as a temporary band-aid, but it is not the answer.

RaisingK said:

I didn't like it either. Applying the style "body { font-size: 80% !important }" was enough to satisfy me, though.

Thank you for this; it's pretty much as good as I could as for since I don't know jack about CSS.

Good day to everyone.

I believe we don't need to have a constant font size. There's a new trend in web design called "responsive web design".

Basically, responsive web pages adjust itself according to available screen space and/or resolution.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design

Demonstration: http://mashable.com/2012/12/11/responsive-web-design/

I don't think danbo has to take it as far as the example on mashable, for now maybe just the font size.

With this solution I think both low-res users and high-res users will be happy.

With all due respect, that would be a horrible idea. You'll notice that the Mashable page scales images, rearranges things, and hides the "what's hot" sidebar depending on window size - but it doesn't change the font size, and that is a Good Thing.

The "right" font size changes a great deal between different users and between different devices (though halfway-decent design will avoid most of the problems with going from low-DPI to high-DPI displays). Having the site dynamically change that is worse than the current system - the site already imposes its idea of "right" on the user when it has no way of actually knowing the user's real preference, which is a common problem, but at least it honours browser/system settings to use larger or smaller fonts as the default. A dynamic-sizing system might end up overriding that, and would also add the pain of having things change if you access the site from multiple devices.

Responsive web pages does not override DPI scale or browser settings. In fact, no CSS code can override these. They instead "add up" to browser settings by using percentages instead of constant sizes.

The one in mashable is given as a demonstration, we don't need to have dynamically sizing pages just to fix the problem of font size. That's kinda overkill.

I quote myself:

I don't think danbo has to take it as far as the example on mashable, for now maybe just the font size.

Dynamically sized fonts is currently being used in facebook and twitter and most people don't even notice because it only has two font sizes, a font size for anyone below 1080p and a font size for anyone above 1080p.

I think it's an elegant solution far different from what you assumed kounishin.

It's true that having just two font sizes wouldn't be so bad - I'd assumed you were talking about something more akin to a smooth-scaling arrangement, where even a small change in window size would cause a change in font size.

I still think you may find that user preferences vary enough that a fair few people will still be unhappy, but since I run a set of styles that change a bunch of stuff in the Danbooru UI anyway, I wouldn't have a huge problem with the site doing something like this. (Whether Albert thinks it's worth spending the time to do so is, of course, not something I can answer...)

Alignn said:

Why specify a size at all? Isn't that sort of thing normally left to the browser entirely?

To a point, but not entirely.

Also, I just noticed that the danbo dynamically resizes thumbnail pages now. Try zooming in and out. (Yay!)

When danbo2 first came out, it didn't do that and there was a few high-res people complaining that there's a lot of space left in the right side.

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