
Ask HN: Is non-adjustable mobile font size a real problem? - meeper16
I find myself simply passing on sites&#x2F;articles where I cannot adjust the font size on mobile. Care to take a guess on the percentage of sites that users choose not to read due to non-adjustable mobile font size? I&#x27;m getting the sense that a signficant portion of ones userbase is being ignored and alienated with sites that do not have pinch-zoom functionality. If this is the case, then it&#x27;s fairly low hanging competitive fruit to enable this kind of functionality.
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tajen
It is a problem. And you know the worst? There are "mobile" libraries like
Zapto (=jQuery) which enable touch features at the expense of zooming. I
didn't check the details, but the sheer idea of blocking zooming on a mobile
device is plain stupid.

~~~
3pt14159
This frustrates me as well. The problem is that some interactions aren't
possible or performant if zooming is allowed.

~~~
tgb
Why is that the case?

~~~
bpicolo
Many mobile browsers have a ~300ms mobile touch delay unless you disable
zooming (because they wait to see if it's a double-tap zoom event). iOS is the
biggest issue with this now, as I think Chrome on android better listens to
some new directives to not wait

~~~
mort96
I think with iOS, even if you disable zooming, you still get that 300ms delay.
A better solution would be to instead of listening to only click, listen to
both click and doing interesting things with ontouchend. I recall implementing
something like that a while ago, where when an element is touched
(ontouchstart), I saved the X and Y coords of the touch, and when the user
releases their finger (ontouchend), if the finger hasn't moved more than say
32 pixels, I fired the callback to whatever. Of course, you also need to do
something to prevent triggering the event twice, but when done correctly, you
get both nice quick click events and zooming.

~~~
bpicolo
Yep, I think there's a well-known library (or 5) around for this somewhere.

edit:
[https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick](https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick)

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tim333
I have a problem too. I've reached the reading glasses stage and have problems
with small text. I was actively looking for a solution recently, something
like the Readability or Clearly extensions which work well in Chrome on the
laptop but I failed to find anything like that for the iPhone. I was
considering trying to make my own app to do it with the idea of using
Phonegap/Javascript to read the html for a site and then process it in a
Clearly type manner. I'm not quite sure if that would work? I think cross site
ajax requests don't work in most browsers
([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15005500/loading-cross-
do...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15005500/loading-cross-domain-html-
page-with-jquery-ajax)) but I vaguely recall they did work when I tried them
from Phonegap on the phone.

~~~
rmetzler
Mobile Safari has "reader view" build in for most sites, but it doesn't work
on every site. It works on most blogs and news sites though. You can find the
button left from the URL.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
Desktop Safari processes the page to try and identify if there is a block of
text that might look like prose. If it finds it, you get the button. If it
can't, you don't.

I assume mobile Safari does something similar.

~~~
cycomachead
Yep, it's an algorithm site authors have no control over. It's definitely
useful, but not something to rely on as a dev.

------
frou_dh
Surely this should be solved in a single place (the browser) rather than
asking every site to implement their own plus & minus buttons.

MobileSafari offers text size adjustment when in the article reading mode (via
the paragraph icon at the left of the address bar), but that mode is only
offered based on some heuristic.

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krzyk
Yeah, I really hate github that is doing this to their mobile page. I have to
sometimes switch to desktop version to get zoom functionality (and some
others, that are missing from mobile version)

~~~
arthurcolle
Fork functionality is notably missing from mobile...

~~~
JosephRedfern
Honest question: how often are you going to fork and then develop software
from a mobile phone?

~~~
robterrell
Not the OP, but I often discover interesting github projects when browsing HN
on mobile and would like to star the project (basically, a bookmark) or even
fork it (if I think I'll want to make code changes and possible send a pr).
Has happened a couple of times in the past week.

~~~
JosephRedfern
Agreed. Starring seems important and useful - but I can't imagine that many
people fork and then develop from a mobile phone... but I'm probably wrong :)

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Quanttek
That's why I'm using Firefox's reading mode more and more. It'll get the
content 95% of the time right and the typography is just gorgeous

~~~
irq-1
Firefox still needs a minimum font size, or font scaling like Chrome has.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Min font size has been in since early Netscape... or are you talking about
something else?

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jschwartzi
It's not just you. Everyone's mobile site seems to choose font sizes that are
readable from across the room on my 5.5 inch phone. I'll quit reading articles
that do this. I'm starting to collect a list of hostnames I won't visit
because the text is too big to read comfortably on my phone.

~~~
gitpusher
Mine is the exact opposite problem :) text too damn small!

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Daneel_
I would say the average designer assumes that users will punch-zoom in to see
text in more detail. The only sites that irritate me in this regard are the
ones that don't let you pinch-zoom.

Full disclosure: I have great eyesight, so there isn't a font size too small
for me on mobile browsers - the limit is what the screen can display. I
sympathise with users with imparied vision, but I'd still claim that pinch-
zooming is the generally-accepted answer.

~~~
Cyph0n
Really now. Open HN in a mobile browser and tell me you don't have to squint
to read at the default zoom level.

~~~
mullsork
HN is a bad example seeing as the maintainers refuse to put in the small
amount of effort it would take to make it work decently on mobile.

~~~
joshuapants
I think the way conversations thread would be pretty hard to do comfortably on
mobile

~~~
pjc50
Reddit manages OK. I wonder what level of petitioning would be required to get
the admins to fix HN? Or are all the cool kids using an app which avoids this
problem?

~~~
DanBC
Which version of Reddit? Reddit, Reddit Mobile, or Reddit Mobile Beta?

~~~
pjc50
[https://reddit.com/.compact](https://reddit.com/.compact) is the one I use.

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RobotCaleb
I miss the first Android browser's ability to reflow text as you zoomed. I
hate zooming in to read, but having to scroll left and right as well as down.

~~~
marvy
Why would they take that away? That seems like the most useful feature a
browser could offer. Does anyone know what mobile browsers do support reflow?
I'd switch to one without hesitation if it did.

~~~
eas
Opera, called Text Wrap under settings. Works great.

~~~
marvy
Thank you!

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byg80
I feel the same way. The problem is that it's just random ones it selects,
leaving other fonts tiny and some massive.

~~~
cma
The old default android browser was so much nicer than Chrome in this area;
you zoomed in until it was comfortable, then double tapped and the text, not
the whole page, would reflow to fit horizontally.

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lastres0rt
The worst is when some sites resize certain components but not others, making
them painfully small.

The most vivid example is Reddit's text resizing but the actual interactive
points of the site (like arrows and replying to comments) are tiny as hell.
(Of course, it is Reddit, so it's not like anything of value is lost...)

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grogers
Font size can definitely be annoying, although it hasn't bitten me very often
- usually you can pinch to get a decent enough size. Far more frequently for
me is the header bar that stays pinned to the top or bottom of the page while
scrolling instead of being at a fixed position. I'm not going to read a long
article with only 60% of my already tiny screen.

I've even seen sites that try to mimic the behavior of the address bar where
if you scroll down it disappears but if you scroll up it pops back in. I've
never once clicked on anything these header bars have to offer except by
mistake...

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allendoerfer
As many noted, disabling pinch-/doubletap-zoom results in faster click events.

It is hard to implement a scaling function if you designed your page using
absolute pixels as units. With relative font-sizes (em,rem,vh,vw,wmax etc) you
could just change the (absolute) font-size of the body tag to resize
everything else. Scaling would then be easy to do in with a little JavasSript,
a plugin or by just honoring the default body font-size the browser set.

The problem is, that using em makes your styles more complex. They are
difficult to use, because ems are relative to the parent element for font-size
and to the element itself for other attributes. If you define a font-size in
em for an element you have to know, where you are going to put this element on
the page. Define the font-size for a list, put a list inside a list and you
messed up your design. Unfortunately the other relative units are not as well
supported, so most websites just use pixels.

Many websites use the Bootstrap framework these days and Bootstrap uses
pixels, too. Here is a discussion about the topic in their issue tracker:

[https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/1943](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/1943)

Ultimately their solution is to drop IE8 support and use rem, which is
relative to the body font-size, in version 4. I look forward to that. While
people could still mess up the scaling by adding their own absolute font-size
declarations, Bootstrap websites will then default to being easily scalable.

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justinc387
If you create a bookmark with the following URL, it will allow you to override
the zoom setting on any site (at least on iOS):

javascript:document.querySelector('meta%5Bname=viewport%5D').setAttribute('content','width=device-
width,initial-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=10.0,user-scalable=1');

~~~
cycomachead
Dear lord. This is so simple and a great idea, even if it temporarily breaks a
few sites! THANKS!

------
stephenboyd
From reading the comments here, it's definitely not just you.

But it's not a problem for me on my recent Samsung Galaxy. I actually prefer
sites that don't delay to wait for a possible double-click. And accidentally
resizing is a hassle because then I have to limit my thumb/finger movements to
straight vertical lines, or else I'll end up scrolling horizontally as well.

When I had a smaller phone, I used a Dolphin browser, which reflowed text as
well as resized fonts when I double-tapped. I thought that was fine. But if
the default pinch/doubletap behavior is to zoom the whole page like Chrome
does, I'd rather not deal with it.

------
whoopdedo
There are a lot of accessibility problems in mobile devices. No large fonts.
No high contrast mode. And have you ever watched someone with unsteady hands
try to touch a button without it being interpreted as a swipe or double-touch?

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bphogan
People are disabling zooming because it causes a delay, which is in turn
caused by developers trying to make HTML act like native apps.

Articles on the web should not be JavaScript heavy. HTML is responsive and
zoomable by default. It takes a few thousand lines of JavaScript and CSS to
make it hard for people to read.

It just boggles my mind how much of the web is static content embedded in some
whiz-bang JavaScript framework. It's static content. Serve it from static
files you generate, let hyperlinks just be hyperlinks, and get on with your
day. :)

/grumpy low vision user is grumpy.

------
kstrauser
Sure is. Not for me, but I met a guy the other day who is already nearly blind
and getting progressively worse. He uses an iPad to make 1-inch-high fonts so
he can make out the character shapes, and said he wants to hang onto reading
with his eyes as long as he can before switching to speech.

I can read teensy text (although with my astigmatism not so easily as when I
was 20), but my acquaintance can't. He seemed like a cool guy and I'd hate to
see him disconnected from the resources I enjoy.

------
jakub_g
Note that Chrome on Android has a "force enable zoom" setting in Accessibility
panel while Opera for Android (which uses Blink engine, same as Chrome) has
reflow-on-zoom support (called "text wrap" in settings).

On Windows Phone there is a system-level setting "ease of access > allow
zooming on all web content".

This basically solves the issue for me. I browse almost exclusively using
Opera.

~~~
jakub_g
For curious souls, Chrome on Android sometimes supports reflow out of the box,
depending on vendor. Apparently vendors like to set different flags in
browsers to differentiate themselves from each other. HTC is one of those who
ships Chrome with reflow on zoom enabled. It is a bit battery draining to
recalculate stuff each time a user zooms hence it's not enabled by default.

*(according to research from Peter Paul Koch from his Mobile web handbook)

------
ricardobeat
Lately the major issue I've seen is font size being too big on landscape
orientation, when portrait looks fine. That when the content is not already
covered by stupid top/bottom fixed bars that were only designed for portrait
mode.

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jy133
How do you think about the OS accessbility zoom features?

~~~
cpncrunch
They're pretty terrible, at least on Android. The latest stock android browser
doesn't have have a text zoom option, and the text zoom features in chrome or
firefox don't really work reliably.

~~~
jraines
What sucks is Android used to be good, at least in a lot of cases. I don't
know how much this generalizes, but on Hacker News I used to be able to pinch
to zoom, then double tap the screen and the site would wrap at the zoomed
size. This went away somewhere around Ice Cream Sandwich, not sure exactly.

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lcswi
I rarely see sites where I cannot zoom in. Many do not let me zoom out though.
Instead, they display what feels like 4 words per line.

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meeper16
Looks like we might see a major shift in functionality, adoption and
competition in the wings for the mobile space.

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anabis
I have to do "see PC version" then do pinch zoom.

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applecore
Another problem is when a non-zoomable mobile site makes it impossible to view
a list of thirty items at once; instead, you get just a few items in your
viewport and you have to scroll incessantly to browse the page.

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SixSigma
Yep, instantly closed

