User Selectable Large Font Size

[xantia_v6]

As a solution to the issue of the forum font being too small for some users on some portable devices, we will be implementing a user-selected option to increase the font size.

This scheme is currently prototyped on a test forum that is located at https://xantiav6.co.uk/forum/ (it will be live here after our next software upgrade in a few weeks).

If you log into https://xantiav6.co.uk/forum/ fonts and spacings will by default be the same as this forum (although a few are slightly wrong at present). Go into your user control panel and the tab "Board Preferences", you will see a new setting: "Would you prefer the font to be larger?:" If you select that, then the fonts on the main forum pages should get about 20% bigger.

The purpose of this topic is for reports and discussion on the changes to the font size.

Some people obviously don't need this change, and they can quite happily ignore it.

There has been a request to apply the larger font feature to this forum ASAP before the next software upgrade, but unfortunately that is not practical. The main problem is that this feature is not a standard part of the phpBB forum software and it requires about 100 manual changes to the forum source code. These then have to be checked on each type of forum page using browsers with different screen resolution. There were several hours work getting the demo version working, and much more to get the final version completed and tested. To complicate matters, the actual changes would be different between the currently installed version of forum software and the new version, and that prevents even the demo version being uploaded to the main server for now.

[xantia_v6]

I would like feedback on the font sizes that have been achieved with the larger font feature enabled. It seems to me that the font size increase of about 20% is good for phones with small screens, but on larger PC screens, the font becomes inconveniently large. This could be inconvenient for people who frequently move between devices.

I am considering the idea of having the larger fonts automatically disabled for devices with larger screens (determined by the screen width in pixels).

I would like to get early feedback, so that the code changes and testing do not need to be done repeatedly.

[daviemck2006]

I cannot say anything about big screens, but am really struggling on even my biggest tablet

[CitroJim]

but am really struggling on even my biggest tablet

Bet that's hard to swallow Davie

[daviemck2006]

but am really struggling on even my biggest tablet

Bet that's hard to swallow Davie [emoji38]

Its a bit too sweet and doing nothing for my diabetes Jim [emoji12] [emoji23]

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk

[xantia_v6]

I cannot say anything about big screens, but am really struggling on even my biggest tablet

I will make some progress on this as soon as I can, but it won't be for a few days due to other commitments.

[xantia_v6]

After putting some more work into this I have decided to discontinue this proposed change due to the technical complexity of getting everything to format correctly.
It has also been found that for Android phone users, a similar result can be achieved by using the text-size setting in the browser, and if the phone's native browser does not support text sizing, then another browser (e.g. Chrome) will.

[Michel]

I'm not sure I follow the need for this anyway. On both my Android devices I can simply pinch and zoom in or out to make the text bigger or smaller as I wish.

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[GiveMeABreak]

Ditto for IOS and Windows Phone users, regardless of browser.

[xantia_v6]

I'm not sure I follow the need for this anyway. On both my Android devices I can simply pinch and zoom in or out to make the text bigger or smaller as I wish.

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The subtlety is that if you make thinks larger by pinch and zoom, the whole page expands, and then you have to scroll backwards and forwards to see the beginning and end of each line. If you change the browser text size, (server-side or client-side) the text gets bigger but is re-wrapped into the frame which fits into the physical window.

[Michel]

I'm not sure I follow the need for this anyway. On both my Android devices I can simply pinch and zoom in or out to make the text bigger or smaller as I wish.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

The subtlety is that if you make thinks larger by pinch and zoom, the whole page expands, and then you have to scroll backwards and forwards to see the beginning and end of each line. If you change the browser text size, (server-side or client-side) the text gets bigger but is re-wrapped into the frame which fits into the physical window.

Ah I see. Thanks for the explanation.

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