It's an accepted fact that most Web surfers never change the defaults in their browser. In particular, that means the default "text size," which Internet Explorer (the most common browser) refers to as "medium." and Firefox refers to as "Normal." Fortunately, both place it under the "View" menu.
Two questions:
- What is the text size set to in your browser?
- Have you looked at your Web site with the text size set to medium/Normal?
You should ask your Web designer or Webmaster to show you how your site looks (with default settings) in Internet Explorer on a Windows computer, Safari on a Macintosh, and Firefox under Windows. That's what your visitors are seeing. You might also ask what percentage of your visitors fall into each category.
By the way, Macintosh computers assume displays have 72 pixels per inch (which is nice for typography, since 1 pixel = 1 typesetter's point measure). Windows computers assume 96 pixels per inch. This means that a poorly executed site design can result in tiny text on Windows systems (but looks fine on your designer's Macintosh).
Most visitors won't fight to read your site. The Back button is just too close at hand.
I'm a Mac guy, and I believe that with Safari and OS X, this has been changed. I'm pretty sure that if your web guy is on a Mac, he's using a modern Mac (if not, buy him a new one for crying out loud!).
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that everyone is looking at 96dpi now.
Posted by: James McNally | December 22, 2005 at 02:28 PM
Hi, James. Thanks for your comment.
Unfortunately, I still see sites (when browsing from Windows) that suffer from the "tiny text" problem. In any event, the point I was trying to make is that wineries that care about the experience their visitors receive should look at their site from different perspectives, which I think you'd agree is true.
Posted by: Mike Duffy | December 22, 2005 at 04:15 PM