A blog post about responsive type and user default styles

[mirisuzanne]

I've been playing with my browser preferences. I like larger text, some favorite default fonts, etc. But I noticed: most sites (including ours) set font size relative to the user setting. That's not actually what I want when I define the default preference. I would rather have sites treat it as a minimum base-size. But sites that already use that size or larger shouldn't change at all.

I think in a post about this I might also explore how we define spacing relative to font-sizes, and the potential issues with that. When users zoom, the padding grows, even though the available space has decreased. So this would be about various issues of responsive type, what units to use, and how our choices interact with user controls/interactions.

[mirisuzanne]

Links:

• https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/why-you-should-use-px-units-for-margin-padding-and-other-spacing-techniques
• https://adrianroselli.com/2024/03/the-ultimate-ideal-bestest-base-font-size-that-everyone-is-keeping-a-secret-especially-chet.html

[SondraE]

@mirisuzanne Checking in to see if you think this post is on track to be published tomorrow. If so, I'll included it in the OddNews issue that scheduled to go out tomorrow.

[mirisuzanne]

@SondraE I think we're on track. I linked the PR here.

(The post only covers half of what this issue it about, but I suppose we can open another issue for the second part)