22253 - fonts in UI specs too small to read on Unix

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Developer Documentation Graveyard :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Akkana Peck]

The Unix specs apparently have a lot of departures from standard Unix practice
and from what we did in 4.x, which are causing people to file bugs -- for
instance, Open in the File menu (bug 22222) or button ordering in dialogs (not
sure of the bug number) -- but Unix people can't review the spec because the
fonts are written for windows and are unreadably small on Unix.  In 4.x/Linux,
they're completely impossible to read, just little smudges a few pixels high; in
mozilla/Linux, they're a little better but still would give most people
eyestrain to read.

Is there some way we could get the fonts changed on the spec documents so that
they're accessible to Unix people, at least for the specs that apply to Unix?

Comment 1

[Akkana Peck]

Attachment: Screen dump from 4.61 on my linux box

Comment 2

[german]

Sorry for that. I bumped up the font sizes in all for specs (should have
verified them on Linux before I post), and while I was at it also removed all
legacy FONT tags, the specs now use CSS exclusively. Let me know if this works
better for you. The fonts are *not* written for Windows, they all have the
sans-serif fall back that works on any platform that supports CSS1. Akkana, let
me know if this works better for you now.

Comment 3

[Akkana Peck]

Thanks -- they look much better in Mozilla on Unix!  They're still very hard to
read in 4.x on Unix, but I guess that gives us some incentive to eat the dogfood
...

Comment 4

[leger]

Moving all UE/UI bugs to new component: User Interface: Design Feedback
UE/UI component will be deleted.

Comment 5

[Eli Goldberg]

QA Assigning non-confidential New/Assigned User Interface: Design Feedback bugs 
to Matthew Thomas ([e-mail]).

Matthew Thomas is now the QA owner for the User Interface: Design Feedback 
component. (Bugs that involve UI issues in the Netscape-branded Mozilla browser 
should continue be QA assigned to [e-mail].)

Comment 6

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

I don't have a Unix box to check this on. This is a developer documentation 

issue, not a UI design issue; so QA assigning to Dawn to check that this has been 

fixed.

Comment 7

[shuang (gone)]

We can't re-write all the specs for Unix, even we can, it won't fix the real 
user problem. This one is not a Ui design bug, it is a technical problem. 
Re-assign to paul and hope that something can be done with the globle skin to 
make this kind of change happen. Also change the bug title to "Unix fonts too 
small to read"

Comment 8

[Akkana Peck]

This wasn't filed as yet another dup of the many existing bugs on linux font
handling in Mozilla, it was intended to point out that nonwindows people might
want to be able to read Mozilla's UI specs in 4.x without having to turn on "Use
my default fonts, ignoring document-specified ones".  If the UI design specs
really must use platform-specific fonts, then I guess WONTFIX is appropriate.

BTW, the spec page looks quite a bit better in mozilla (at least with my font
prefs) than in 4.72. :-)

Comment 9

[hangas]

This is a global issue for Linux users.  My understanding is that the problem is 
less severe on mozilla than Netscape 4.x.  I also think that the effort to 
convert specs to a different font would be quite large.  If we have figured out 
which fonts to use for future specs that will work well on all platforms and 
browsers and this information is forwarded to me, I will try to get all of our 
future spec work to use these fonts.  In the mean time our apologies to those 
that are unable to read the specs.  Closing bug as Later.

Comment 10

[Dawn Endico]

That's simple. The font that works on all platforms is "default".
If you simply must change the font size, use size=+n or size=-n.
Using absolute font sizes is just asking for trouble.  This isn't
just a problem for lame whiners on obscure platforms. Its an accessibility
issue as well. People set their default font size to something they 
can see. Why should you override this?

Comment 11

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

LATER is deprecated per bug 35839.

Comment 12

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

->default

Comment 13

[Brant Gurganus]

HTML tidied, removed absolute font sizing, made special sizes 0.8em

Comment 14

[Brant Gurganus]

Daniel, want to verify?

Comment 15

[Daniel Wang]

the html source has been formatted so I can't see if any content has been
changed. Brant, did you change the contents, cause the modification date has
also been changed? I don't think we should change the original Netscape5 design
spec.

I don't use Unix, so dunno if the fonts are okay.