481371 - Minimum font size should optionally scale fonts

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: CSS Parsing and Computation, enhancement)

Description

[Bobby Jack]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6

Choosing a minimum font size will, often, adjust several differently-sized elements to the same value. For example, 2 levels of heading followed by a paragraph, at 16px, 14px, and 12px respectively, with a 16px min font size, will result in uniform font sizes for all elements (http://www.fiveminuteargument.com/images/ff-min-font-2.png), rendering the design less usable. If fonts simply scaled up to ensure the smallest is the minimum (http://www.fiveminuteargument.com/images/ff-min-font-3.png), the design's representation of the structure would remain intact.

At the very least, this could be offered as an option rather than replacing the current mechanism.

Further details: http://www.fiveminuteargument.com/minimum-font-size

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Bum]

I've been working on implementing a way to adding this feature and have not had much luck yet. The way the fonts are stored are in nodes which hold the different styles, I have not found a way to find an efficient way of retrieving the smallest font present to implement the simple algorithm so I'm currently working on a way to walk through the tree. The current plan is to add a simple check-box to enable or disable the scaling of the text in the same menu where you set the minimum font size and also the type of scaling that I'm planning to use is arithmetic scaling. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Comment 2

[Bobby Jack]

Sounds great, Bum (that you're looking into it). What's your rationale for arithmetic scaling? If I understand it correctly, Firefox's text zooming acts geometrically, so this was the suggested implementation in my article.

Comment 3

[Bum]

I'm currently planning on taking the smallest font size in the document and comparing the difference between that and the minimum font size requested and adding that difference to all fonts in the document. I will work on geometric scaling after I get the arithmetic scaling working.

Comment 4

[DA]

I'm also helping Bum with the implementation of this feature. We chose to start with trying to implement arithmetic scaling because we were worried that the geometric scaling would make the Large Text too large and effect the readability of the page. As Bum said we will implement it using both methods then we will decide on which method leads to more readable pages.

Comment 5

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

You might also want to see the discussion in http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.tech.layout/browse_thread/thread/191cbc4f7b38b292/67e4e34b022d8caa (none of which ever led to anything).

Comment 6

[Bobby Jack]

Glad to see this bug (and the general issue) is getting some attention. That thread looks like a great source of information, and I'll take the time to read through it in detail. I hope that by focussing on this one very narrow issue, we might be able to make a fairly simple enhancement that will have a positive effect.

I've put together a very basic client-side demo of 'minimum font size scaling'. I need to expand this to apply to some sample web pages that demonstrate both problem and solution, but here's how it stands so far, for anyone that's interested:

http://www.fiveminuteargument.com/minimum-font-scaler

Comment 7

[Gérard Talbot]

(In reply to Bobby Jack from comment #0)
> Further details: http://www.fiveminuteargument.com/minimum-font-size

Now, retrievable from:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150309052855/http://www.fiveminuteargument.com:80/blog/minimum-font-size


(In reply to Bobby Jack from comment #6)
> http://www.fiveminuteargument.com/minimum-font-scaler

Now, retrievable from:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150312170000/http://www.fiveminuteargument.com:80/minimum-font-scaler

Comment 8

[MarjaE]

Isn't this what zooming is for?

I use a minimum font size, because I want to make small text readable on my screen, and I don't want to make already-readable text gigantic. I would use zooming if I wanted to make already-readable text gigantic.