When creating web pages, I always try to ensure that it’s as accessible as possible so that as many people visitng the site can use it. Many developers overlook the fact that text can be resized and the impact that this can have on a page, but now the majority of browsers are introducing page zoom, is this something that we no longer need to worry about?
Internet Explorer has implemented page zoom for a while now but as Firefox previously used text-resizing, it’s not something that I’ve thought about in any depth as I still wanted all Firefox users to be able to view the page when text size was increased. I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to creating web pages and the thought of delivering a project where the layout broke even slightly when the size of the text is increased is something that I’d never be happy with.
The problems that this brings to ensure that boxes expand to allow the text to increase can add a few hours to a project and in many cases means that extra HTML is required to make a layout flexible enough to cope with the text.
However, when Firefox 3 was released, one of the things I noticed was how it handles the page when the text size was increased. No longer does Firefox use text-resizing but instead uses page zoom in exactly the same way that IE7 and Opera do. Safari is the odd one out and still uses text-resizing but it has been confirmed that this is going to change in an upcoming release and is already included in the webkit nightly builds.
So where does this leave us? Dave Shea also writes an interesting article on the subject and asks the question:
So, personal preference aside, I wonder whether designing around scaling text is still a skill we need to hold on to, and for how long. I’d be interested in hearing about reasons for and against, as I’m sure there will be both.
At the moment I’m not convinced but could it be possible that in the not so distant future we go back to using pixels for font-sizes and this section of the accessibility guidelines is actually dealt with by the browser rather than the designer?
I can’t remember the source off-hand, but I recently read a very good article talking about the difference between resizing text and full-page zoom, in terms of accessibility.
In summary, they are quite different; if you have poor vision and want to increase the size of the text for legibility, full-page zoom is not the best option; it means all images and layouts also become larger, and makes it more likely to introduce horizontal scrolling. The best solution would be that the layout remains intact, but the text size increases.
Full page zoom is a boon for lazy developers, but not for those users who would theoretically benefit most.
Peter may be right in principle, but full page zoom in Firefox 3 can exclude images if required.
Tend to think we do not need it anymore.
I fail to see why it is used in the first place, nice tools and features but I do not or have ever seen anyone use them, they always just “ctrl +”, squint or move on.
i think we can safely leave it up to the browser or the OS to handle from here on out…well, Mac OS X at least…
Is it works in IE 8?