Re: Dynamic CSS - variable size text

Interesting work, David.  Although the ability to overwride a stylesheet is
inherent in the concept, I think you are right that most users are not yet
aware of the issue.

You may run into a snag due to the fact that stylesheets are most useful
when externally linked, though...

D

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Sharp" <David.Sharp(at)sharp-words.com>

Hi,

I've been doing a bit of work on a dynamic stylesheet, which allows
the user to change font sizes to suit their own preferences.

http://www.sharp-words.com:8080/ - play with the "Text preferences"
settings.

I would be interested to hear how useful people find this type of feature.

-- Is it worth doing at all, or should one simply let users define
their own font size settings?

(I suspect that given the number of sites on the Web which force font
sizes, many users don't even realise that they can adjust the
settings to suit their visual preferences. But I may be wrong on
that).

-- If you think it's worth doing, are there any comments, criticisms?

To create the dynamic stylesheet, I had to specify that PHP should
parse ".css" files.

The page feeds a "basefont" parameter to the style sheet via the
query string; PHP then inserts the user's size preferences, specified
in pixels, into the css file.

To see what I mean, take a look at
http://www.sharp-words.com:8080/css/default.css?fontbase=10 and fool
around with the "fontbase" value. Ten is the default; it can go as
low as six, and as high as the user wants.

NB: right now, the page works best with IE 5. It also works with
Netscape 4.X, but a few other things need to be fixed for that
browser.

Comments, reactions?

Best wishes,
--
--
David Sharp, journaliste, France http://www.sharp-words.com/
Tel (home) 331 45 49 24 09  - (office) 331 40 41 47 92
  E-mail <mailto:david.sharp(at)sharp-words.com>

HWG hwg-techniques mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA