Hot answers tagged legibility
39
I believe neither is “easier” to read in general, and I would instead try to make it a country-dependent setting that mimics the common book spine orientation, either in the visitor’s country or in the web site’s country.
In Wikipedia’s book entry, the spine tilting section says the following:
In the United States, the Commonwealth and in Scandinavia, ...
35
Ideal line length is reasonably short or reasonably long; what's generally esthetically pleasing to read is generally a good indication.
Columns in a web context make sense only if you were focusing on very compact content; which defeats the purpose of using columns beyond beautification. The reason they don't make sense otherwise is not because they are ...
34
First things first, this is what it looks like to color blind (deuteranopia; by the most common form of colorblindness) users:
(also the zebrastripes are almost impossible to see, colorblind or not)
Red on green is a classically bad color combo, though your magenta text isn't entirely unreadable. The background color is very loud though which can be hard ...
29
I believe high contrast such as black on white can cause eye strain. Also there is evidence that it is particularly bad for people with dyslexia. For further info:
http://uxmovement.com/content/6-surprising-bad-practices-that-hurt-dyslexic-users/
http://www.dyslexiacentre.co.uk/dyslexia.htm
WCAG provide details on what is acceptable colour contrast, but ...
28
Short Answer
Make them like tabs and follow that mental model (clockwise on right, counter-clockwise on left, upright on bottom).
Medium Answer
If your design uses tab-like elements, follow the logic of tabs. If it uses book-like elements, follow that model and pick a direction—if you're in the US, follow the orientation of book spines here (clockwise). And ...
19
For two main reasons,according to Microsoft posted 3 days ago:
We’ve chosen to use uppercase styling in the top menu for two main reasons: 1) to keep Visual Studio consistent with the direction of other Microsoft user experiences, and 2) to provide added structure to the top menu bar area.
On the first point, the use of uppercase text is becoming a ...
17
There is a study on rotated text readability from University of Toronto. Although it is on tabletop displays, I think it can be applied here too. The result shows that it takes significantly less time to read clockwise (-90 degree rotated) for words in any positions of the screen. It is not clear for 6-digit number though.
17
I think you're trying to solve a readability problem the wrong way.
Line length (measure) is your real problem. The number generally advised for a readable measure is about 60-70 characters. Cut the measure to about 60% of it's current length and you'll find you have far less trouble. The other way to solve it is a bigger font size ... that would be really ...
16
Yes. Jakob Nielsen did a study many years ago and found that users like reading text that's easily scannable.
Scanning can save users time. During
the study, 15 participants always
approached unfamiliar Web text by
trying to scan it before reading it.
Only 3 participants started reading
text word by word, from the top of the
page to the ...
16
I don't deal in print, but I have read quite a bit about fonts in the past.
Recent studies have shown that serif vs. sans serif on a computer display is not really what affects readability, even at lower resolutions. Print, however, is a different matter. The studies consistently indicate that in print, serif based fonts are easier to read. That said, some ...
14
You want to look to sites such as W3.org for advice on this.
Many people with cognitive disabilities have trouble tracking lines of text when a block of text is single spaced. Providing spacing between 1.5 to 2 allows them to start a new line more easily once they have finished the previous one.
The W3C accessibility guidelines 1.4.8 state (emphasis ...
13
The biggest problem is the visual emphasis lost by the bright colour (in this case green). You can say "ignore the other colour", but it's the biggest problem with the readability! So it's hard to successfully improve the readability without working on that colour.
The menu on the left is very high contrast, causing it to distract the reader from the main ...
13
Caps are an effective way of introducing visual hierarchy without increasing point size or using bold. All-caps can make small text seem more important or conceptually higher in the hierarchy than larger text.
Metro, being highly typographic, requires designers have a significant degree of freedom to express visual hierarchy without resorting to colour or ...
13
My guess would be that it's so the text renders consistently across all browsers. Not all browsers support font face. So images are the only way to have full control of the experience.
Many of the visitors to that page might have a old PC. So rather that risking having the page destroyed by improper rendering they show an image. So that the site conveys ...
11
This is a widely debated subject. One of the best ways I've seen this explained, is from the presentation Design for developers: making your frontends suck less by Idan Gazit.
This had the following slide:
This is 16pt text on a normal screen, and 12pt text in a book. The message is that 12pt is excellent for a book, but is also usually held much closer to ...
11
Research generally suggests light on dark is harder to read in most cases but considering we're talking accessibility, you should know that results for those with normal vision don't necessarily hold true for those with various vision impairments.
I've heard higher contrast (the mode in Windows is called High Contrast mode I think) can be easier to read ...
10
Yes, the colors may not be good for some. The screen is very organized, but I would suggest a better color theme. Not a drastic one, but I would make the background color much lighter than it is, as it is too loud. It seem to draw my attention passed the content.
Also red, is not the best default choice for font, as most website use that for errors, and ...
10
It's well known that greater variance in letter height aids readability since it makes letters more distinct. In this case your problem is the Ascender Height vs the X-Height (or possibly the Cap Height).
The readability of All Caps text has long been known to be poorer than normal type, mostly because the lack of variation in letter forms. Mixed Case is ...
10
Thought this was funny ... someone has already created a hack to turn the visual studio ALL CAPS Menus back into lowercase. (I realise Microsoft have said they will expose this functionality themselves... but this demonstrates someone with a level of urgency).
The point here is that many people really find ALL CAPS hard to read and/or aesthetically painful ...
9
If someone is looking to change text size, having the ability to do so in the browser and on the site means they're more likely to find the option. However, something to think about:
If in testing or conversation you find people actually using your zoom buttons, your text is too small.
Whether or not the site design is clever matters much less to your ...
9
I've been scolded for using too much bold in SO questions, so I learned that...
Using too much bold disrupts your natural reading rhythm,
but some italics and bold can be helpful in appropriate quantities.
If your text contains a lot of highlighting or bold, consider breaking it up into bulleted lists.
9
So, how do you define the minimum value?
Tuftes’ data density is really about three principles: (1) Above all else, show the data, (2) Maximize the data-ink ratio and (3) Erase non-data ink. In its extreme this could be interpreted as small as possible human could read. We’re talking about font-sizes as small as 3 pixels, but practically 5 pixels which ...
9
I think this is influenced by personal preference and the width of the block of text. The wider the block of text, the bigger the line-height should be in order to keep your eyes on the same line while reading it.
Personally, I like the line-height to be 1.5em or 1.6em.
This Interactive Guide to Blog Typography has a section about line-height which also ...
9
An article Optimal Line Height says:
Typography references consistently put ideal line height at 1.2 ems (a measure of type equivalent to the the letter height or point size of a typeface).
The main idea of defining a proper line height is to let text paragraph look solid and be pleasant to read (if you will choose a bigger line height the ...
8
The current combination of green and orange that you have here is very hard to see, especially for those with visual impairments. A great resource for checking the accessibility of color combinations is Snook's Colour Contrast Check. This tool checks against multiple color accessibility standards set forth by W3C. This question What are good resources for ...
8
Red text on a green background never works very well, which is counter-intuitive because red and green are opposite on the color wheel, so one would think that the contrast would be great. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work that way, and it creates a kind of micro-haloing effect when your mind tries to sort out the difference. The green background looks ...
8
Two words: Functional Obsolescence
That's usually a term used in Real Estate, but the general idea is that the Home (or in this case, the EULA box) is obsolete, but still functional.
For example, there are many better ways to provide an EULA interface, but over the years nobody wanted to take the time to enhance the EULA part of software registration or ...
8
Place the ingredients above the instructions, possibly even in the top-corner of each page so that you can see the ingredients easily when flicking through the book. Cooking books aren't only used when the recipe is being cooked but when it's being researched. By having the ingredients at the top of the instructions they are consistently in the same place ...
8
No,for the simple reason that justified text can often create large blocks of white spaces which breaks the continuity of flow of words. To quote this article found in UX movement
When you use justified text, you’re not only making text difficult to
read for non-dyslexic users, but even more so for dyslexic users.
Justified text creates large uneven ...
7
12px seems to work fine for most people. Having something at 17px makes it harder to read, and so does having it below 10px. I think 12-13px is a good guideline.
But really, you should set your text size to something like 1em. This is because some browsers will not allow users to resize text if it is set in pixels. No matter what text size you have, people ...
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