X-cart usability

Sembroidery · #1 12-12-2004, 10:16 AM

I recently got the following from a visitor:

Quote:

Why can't I read your website. The print is so small I can't read it on my 19 inch monitor.

Well, I have, of course, made changes in skin1.css and have increased the default font size (which way too small) to 12px which displays pretty normally (at least in my view) on monitors with up to 1024 x 768.
Obviously however some people still have problems with this font size on monitors with higher resolution.

Would appreciate if you could share your experience and advice on this matter.

balinor · #2 12-12-2004, 10:50 AM

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#font-size-props

Sembroidery · #3 12-12-2004, 12:45 PM

I am afraid that the w3.org font specifications do not leave me any wiser as to how to make x-cart store more easily usable by visitors

BTW I guess that this particular user I quoted above would most probably direct the same question to you if she visited your site.

Dennis Bater · #4 12-12-2004, 12:57 PM

Of course they could always increase the font size on their browser! But that would be too easy. I don't think I would make changes to my site because of one complaint.

kpayne · #5 12-12-2004, 12:58 PM

Can you post a link to your site?

Also, the browser does have some say over text size. It's quite easy in Internet Explorer to dial down the font size if you hold CTRL and use your scroll wheel. This would only apply to any font that isn't specifically covered by a CSS rule. Firefox will even override hard set CSS styles.

balinor · #6 12-12-2004, 01:03 PM

Ok, let me see if I can try to explain it. If you specify pixels in your CSS file, as in 12px, users on Internet Explorer can't scale fonts up, which they tend to do if they are on a laptop or high resolution setup. In order for the scale up function to work properly, you need to specify percentage (as in font-size: 100%), em units (font-size: 1em) or a relative size such as small, medium, large, etc. The problem of course becomes the fact that if you do this, you have very little control of the appearance of your site.

I, for one, am very particular how my sites look, so I specify pixels. Based on the percentages of visitors to my sites, I will vary this size accordingly, but I have found that well over 75% of the visitors are on 1024x768 resolution in IE 6. For them, 12px looks just fine.

If you want to get really precise, you can use a detection script to deliver different style sheets for different resolutions. However, simply specifying a percentage or an em value for fonts will allow the user more control over how the site looks, and should help you to solve your problem. Just don't expect it to look great when the user sets the font size to display as large

Test out the different options and view it in different resolutions and see how it looks.

Sembroidery · #7 12-12-2004, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dennis Bater

Of course they could always increase the font size on their browser! But that would be too easy.

That's exactly what they cannot do if they are browsing my store using MSIE as I have the font size fixed at 12px. If they used the Maxthon add-on, or Firefox, or Opera they would have no problems to enlarge the pages. But somehow I do not like the idea of telling would be customers something like: "If you want to enter my store you MUST wear your brown shoes" ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dennis Bater

I don't think I would make changes to my site because of one complaint.

Well, it may be one complaint but question is how many click away without bothering to complain. My stats show something like this:

1024x768 - 48.37%
800x600 - 40.37%
1280x1024 - 5.31%
Unknown - 2.73%
1152x864 - 2.10%
640x480 - 0.91%
1600x1200 - 0.21%

Are you ready to easily give up some 6-7% of your visitors?

balinor · #8 12-12-2004, 01:47 PM

Those 6-7% of visitors must have an awful lot of problems surfing the web, because there are millions of sites that used 12px as their standard font size.

Sembroidery · #9 12-12-2004, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by balinor

If you specify pixels in your CSS file, as in 12px, users on Internet Explorer can't scale fonts up, which they tend to do if they are on a laptop or high resolution setup. In order for the scale up function to work properly, you need to specify percentage (as in font-size: 100%), em units (font-size: 1em) or a relative size such as small, medium, large, etc. The problem of course becomes the fact that if you do this, you have very little control of the appearance of your site.

I have figured that much. On my static pages (simple HTML with no fancy design) I am using em units so that MSIE user can scale up font display. Trying the same approach on x-cart store however provides results I did not like so I left the fonts at fixed sizes.
That's why I asked other x-cart users to share their experience.

Sembroidery · #10 12-12-2004, 01:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by balinor

Those 6-7% of visitors must have an awful lot of problems surfing the web, because there are millions of sites that used 12px as their standard font size.

Well, you may be right. But I guess that at least some of the "millions of sites that used 12px as their standard font size" do have a problem because they are loosing visitors who have enough money to buy bigger monitors ...