This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Weiqi Gao. Original Post: The Text Zoom Test for Web Pages Feed Title: Weiqi Gao's Weblog Feed URL: http://www.weiqigao.com/blog/rss.xml Feed Description: Sharing My Experience... Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Weiqi Gao Latest Posts From Weiqi Gao's Weblog

I read a lot of web pages. Unfortunately, most of them use font sizes that are too small for me. So I use the "Text Zoom" feature of my browser (Ctrl++, Ctrl+-, and Ctrl+0 in Mozilla) to make the words bigger.

I have noticed that some web pages don't respond well to this treatment:

• The fixed width column: This happens most on "news" sites. As I increase the font size, the column that contains the text does not grow with it. I end up with a couple of words per line.
• The crazy rules: This happened on at least one weblog that I read regularly. It uses horizontal and vertical rules to separate different areas of content. As I increase the font size, the texts grow as I expected, but the rules jump all over the place, clashing with the text.
• The overlapping layers: This happened for some of the weblogs I read. As I increased the font size, different regions of the page grow into each other, obscuring each others words.
• The disappearing header: Again, on a blog, as the font size increases, the area reserved for the page header remains constant, clipping off first the sub title, then increasing percentages of the bottom portion of the main title.

I suspect most of these are caused by hard coded pixel sizes, and shouldn't be that hard to fix.

Could you please take a moment and do a few text zooms on your web pages for me?

Thank you!