browser text size override

howdy folks....

was wondering if anyone knows how to override the browser text size option

VIEW >> TEXT SIZE >> {smallest, smaller,...,largest}

this can really hose up the store formatting if the customer has a setting much different than what you developed it for.

thanks to anyone who might know.

This is a user preference that isn't over ride able according to W3C nor is it recommended to try simply because some people might need to increase that size in order to read the web sites that they visit which is why it is a recommended practice to use the .em sizes rather than setting a specific px or pt size.

thanks for the info, but unfortunately flash movies arent resizeable... at least the main_ movie isn't that i know of (though child movies within main_ are).

the movies are loaded based on $current_page_base and are designed to be the center of attention... but when the text size forces the table <td> sizes to get resized, there's a very noticeable misalignment between the movie and <td> edges.

is there a way to at least detect what the browser TEXT SIZE is set at? i could redesign it so that the header <td> areas and the flash movies scale accordingly...

Set your column width sizes in ems and they will scale with the text.

ok, so the problem isnt just with the .em scalable objects. its with the flash objects that are forced to scale with the original movie aspect ratio... i can scale the flash movie size, but then the apparent edges arent aligned when the edges arent white unless i scale both width and height. which means i must also make sure that all objects sharing edges with the flash movie (and with a given desired alignment) scale as well.

this is like the first day of linear algebra class... so the question is: is .em the scaling factor that is distributed equally across all components (in this case just 2, length and height)? if fonts were 3-d or even defined for a hyperspace, the question would be essentially the same: if your screen is defined as some vector space, does the distributive law hold for some constant, .em?

The theory of .em is all relative.

If you define a base size in pixels then all other text sizes would be relative to that size. Or you can define based on the browser defaults (the way Zen Cart did).

In the body selector of the CSS we have used font-size: 62.5%. This should set the "base size" at approx 10px. The other font-sizes are relative to that.

well i found some stats from oreilley folks. unfortunately they give nothing about the sample size, hypothesis test parameters, etc... but im not gonna lose sleep over this any more! maybe some eye-care insurance company bean counter might care about some implied claim, but i sure as h* don't (h* => whore derves)!

from http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/03/more_statistics_on_user_clicks.html

======================
I was surprised by the number of users who choose non-default text size settings in their browser. Although this may be due to a selection effect (this data comes mainly from Museum websites, which may have a particular audience), the figures are still surprising:

Font Size (IE) % of users
Largest 4.1%
Larger 2.7%
Medium 88.9%
Smaller 3.1%
Smallest 0.9%

(give or take rounding errors)

======================

To see how it works, set up a clean ZC, change the name of the Classic directory to classic.OLD. Then you will be looking at the template default. Change the column widths in the admin to 15em ( from 150px) and the side column widths to 15em also. Then play with the text size in various browsers. While you will get some things that look different, the template should scale fairly well no matter which browser setting is used.

Since both use Chinese and English, but they are two very different languages,
Had found some readings about font sizes, may be interesting.

A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which Size and Type is Best?
Usability Tip: Select Easy-To-Read Fonts

And online comparison of font and size in you browser.
Compare Screen Type

.

For more studies related to webs, go into the Usability News Digest of The Software Usability Research Laboratory.