Justin Dolske <mailto:dol...@mozilla.com>
2016 September 8 at 15:41
"Make things bigger" is somewhat curious... On Windows this is typically
done by adjusting the display scaling factor in the OS settings. I wonder
if people don't know about that, or are looking to make Firefox --
specifically -- larger than normal. I'm unclear on what Linux offers these
days, and while I think OS X supports this internally it's not exposed in
any UI. (Apple's preferred route seems to be screen zooming. Which is neat,
I use it all the time and have normal vision.) So I'd be curious to
understand this use-case better.
I suspect that users indeed are unaware that they can fix this in OS
settings (except on Mac), and if an OS vendor asked the same questions
about the system as a whole, they'd get a similar response. It'd be
interesting for us to confirm that with a followup question about
Firefox vs. apps in general.
For my part, I too have "normal" (i.e. emmetropic) vision too (although
lately with a bit of presbyopia). Nevertheless, I've long found native
UI affordances to be too small. In the past, I've decreased the
resolution of my display or installed themes with larger icons (in apps
that support themes) to mitigate the issue. These days I mostly just
live with it for native apps. But I almost always zoom web apps.
Although it's dangerous to extrapolate from a sample of two (especially
us two!) I suspect we aren't isolated cases, and there's a population of
folks with "normal" vision who nonetheless prefer larger affordances for
better readability, easier click targets, etc. and are willing to trade
off space for content or other windows (or, in your case, to use
features like screen zooming).
Separately from themes, I think it would be a good idea to consider adding
preferences UI for the default zoom-level of page content in Firefox.
Indeed. Another interesting (but more complex to implement) option would
be to adjust that zoom level to maximize the horizontal usage of space
of a page, zooming more for sites with small font sizes and narrow
columns of content, and less for sites where the default zoom level
pushes content offscreen and creates horizontal scrollbars (or triggers
an over-responsive mobile-friendly rearranging of content).
-myk
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