Closed Bug 800849 Opened 12 years ago Closed 3 years ago

Text sample in text size preferences UI does not provide an accurate preview of the text inflation

Categories

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Settings and Preferences, defect)

18 Branch
ARM
Android
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(firefox17 affected, firefox18 affected, firefox19 affected)

RESOLVED INCOMPLETE
Tracking Status
firefox17 --- affected
firefox18 --- affected
firefox19 --- affected

People

(Reporter: AdrianT, Unassigned)

Details

(Keywords: uiwanted, Whiteboard: [readability])

Attachments

(1 file)

Aurora 18.0a2 2012-10-11
Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (Android 4.0.4)

Steps to reproduce:
1. Go to nytimes.com or any other page affected by font inflation
2. Go to settings and open the Text size preferences UI
3. Change the text size to every available text size and check back with the page for the size.

Expected results:
The size of the text displayed in the text size preferences pop-up is a correct preview of the text size.

Actual results:
The size of the smallest text is a lot smaller then any text on the page. The text for the largest text is is way larger then anything on the page. The medium text size is the closest to the real text size.

The text preview should reflect the correct size so the user can make the correct decision on what size to choose and not do a trial an error.
Whiteboard: [readability]
(In reply to adrian tamas from comment #0)
> Expected results:
> The size of the text displayed in the text size preferences pop-up is a
> correct preview of the text size.

Hm, yeah, so this is going to be difficult. The problem is that the actual font-inflation size depends on the width of the containing block, the specified text size (by the author), and this preference. So, we aren't going to be able to give an accurate estimate for the text size, since we really only have one block of text to which font inflation is applied. 

> The text preview should reflect the correct size so the user can make the
> correct decision on what size to choose and not do a trial an error.

I did think about this when we were redesigning the font-inflation settings menu. That said, this UI is a _lot_ better than the previous one, so we're moving in the correct direction. 

I think the only way we're going to be able to fix this in the way that you are thinking, adrian, is if we give a small preview of the page in the active tab within the settings menu, and then allow text size changing. Unfortunately, I don't think this is probably a good solution, either, since it will require re-laying out the page every time the preference changes, which we've had problems with in the past.
In my opinion even if we can't provide the correct size, which as you explained may be very hard, I would expect the scale to be at least accurate. Get a general text size small text and increase the font in the text size UI proportionally to what the user would see if the text on the page would be that size. 

My main concern here is that in the UI from a text with size 2-3 for extra small (no font inflation) the text size UI window is displaying a text size of 20+ for extra large. Text inflation will never do that. The size should be at least to the correct scale in my opinion.
Ian, please renom if you want to do anything here
Assignee: nobody → ibarlow
tracking-fennec: ? → ---
Keywords: uiwanted
I tend to agree with Adrian here. It's nice to have preview text to help you gauge how big you want your text to display, but if it isn't even somewhat accurate it is'nt very useful either. 

So it sounds like possible options could be:
1. Fix the dialog to be more accurate 
2. Preview with real web content -- either in this menu box, or as a toolbar in UI where you can see content and adjust on the fly
3. Go back to a small medium large extra large selector menu, with no preview. (easy, but not at all ideal)

I quite like Scott's idea, #2 here, of using real content to preview rendering. Might this be a worthy Readability project experiment to try, to see if we can make it work, and make it smooth enough to be a good user experience?
(In reply to Ian Barlow (:ibarlow) from comment #4)
> I tend to agree with Adrian here. It's nice to have preview text to help you
> gauge how big you want your text to display, but if it isn't even somewhat
> accurate it is'nt very useful either. 
> 
> So it sounds like possible options could be:
> 1. Fix the dialog to be more accurate 
> 2. Preview with real web content -- either in this menu box, or as a toolbar
> in UI where you can see content and adjust on the fly
> 3. Go back to a small medium large extra large selector menu, with no
> preview. (easy, but not at all ideal)
> 
> I quite like Scott's idea, #2 here, of using real content to preview
> rendering. Might this be a worthy Readability project experiment to try, to
> see if we can make it work, and make it smooth enough to be a good user
> experience?

Sure, I think we could try it and see what happens. One thing to note, though, is that we're probably going to want to display the page in the user's active tab, because font inflation can vary from site to site, depending on available width of containers. So, if we're serious about giving users a "real preview", then we need to make sure that they get a taste of what it will be like on the website they are currently viewing. (My thinking here is that if the user decided to change the font inflation settings, then they presumably did so for a reason. That reason is likely to be the page they are currently visiting has fonts that are too small.)
Assignee: ibarlow → nobody
Component: Graphics, Panning and Zooming → Settings and Preferences
We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 3 years ago
Resolution: --- → INCOMPLETE
Product: Firefox for Android → Firefox for Android Graveyard
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