HTML AND SMALL LETTERS (26 december 2003)
I used to be a teacher for some time. During that period it struck me that children have such sharp eyesight. For cribbing purposes they sometimes write the complete theory for a school test on a post-stamp sized paper.
Some makers of Internet sites don't realize that not all their readers are teenagers. In order to cram as much text as possible on one screen, they use the smallest letters they can find.
One day I made a pleasant discovery: the view menu of Internet Explorer has an option called Text Size. I was very happy to find that this option enabled me to see small-sized letters much bigger.
But in recent years more and more makers of sites have discovered there are ways to prevent viewers of their sites from magnifying the letters. These days, I find more and more pages that use an almost microscopic size of letters, and the option to make the letters bigger has in some way been disabled.
I heard that some people call this kind of torture professional. To be honest, I can't see what is so professional about making it next to impossible for a part of your visitors to read your pages.
Please makers of websites, stop tormenting your visitors!. Why don't you have a look at the real professionals? For instance, the pages of Google. The text is completely scaleabe! Please have courage and don't be a slave of Internet fashion. The first command of your Internet page should be: how can I make a visit to my pages as pleasant as possible?
