A text size widget to make it easy to change the user preferences font size
Usage
The theme will display Text Size: A A A on the top. Clicking an 'A' will change the font size of all elements, and will be saved as the user font-size preferences.
Usually a user will change the font size only few times in the first visit in a wiki, until it reach a good setting. Then, the next visit will use the user chosen value.
Great examples can be seen in usabilityfirst.com and wired.com.
Why it is needed?
MoinMoin uses 1em for most text, so the browser font the user chose is used. This would be enough in a perfect world, when users know that browsers can be configured to use their fonts, and all sites will use 1em for their text size.
In reality, sites use various font size, usually much smaller than a user would choose. So if you regularly visit many sites that use small font size, and make your browser default size 18pt to overcome this, moin font become huge.
A use can use the browser font size menu to make fonts smaller or bigger. But this setting effect all sites, and is temporary, so you have to set it again and again, and it does not help at all.
A theme can change the font size, but a user can not install a theme on a site, and you can't have one size that will make all users happy.
A user can have personal css, not many users know css. The solution should work for all users, requiring only clicking ability.
Discussion
I would find this very useful; has anyone developed such a widget? -- Casethejoint
I don't think we should "fix" moin because users don't configure their browsers right or visit sites with silly font sizes. Many browsers have a function to enlarge or reduce text size for rendering, if you use Firefox just hit Ctrl-+/-. -- ThomasWaldmann 2005-10-17 18:05:30
- The browser font menu does not help because its temporary. You want to set the size one time and reuse the same size in your next visits.
This is a feature that 3rd party developer can add on a new theme. To make this possible, we must make sure that our user system enable adding custom keys, maybe provide an api for that.
-- Anon
Browser settings don't make you happy in each case. The problem of ctrl-+/- being temporary was already mentioned. And changing the dpi settings or base font sizes of the browser doesn't help you with themes using non-relative sizes (i.e. px/pt instead of em), which is why I use a "bigmodern" (using em everywhere) on local wikis where I can install that theme. -- JürgenHermann 2005-10-19 19:04:57
Regular _joe _user isn't a comp-sci major who fiddles with his browser settings too much. A A A has been around for a long time as a very intuitive, quick and dirty way to increase usesability. What are the actual obstacles to adding such functionality to moin?