19 Aug 2004 | David Schontzler said...

Well, I know I use it. The font size bit is really nice, as I'm on a laptop and like having my ESPN stories with nice, big text. The thing is, when I up my font size, I liked being able to change the font face as well since some fonts look better than others at larger sizes.

So, I guess my point is, if you are going to offer font sizing (a good feature), allowing the user to change the font on top of that has its advantages as well.

19 Aug 2004 | Donny said...

The feature is nice; however, it is hidden all the way at the botom. If you didn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have found it.

19 Aug 2004 | pb said...

I usually prefer that site publishers pick one good design and focus ont hat rather than offering cusotmizability or options that tend to compromise everything.

19 Aug 2004 | Darrel said...

I usually prefer that site publishers pick one good design and focus ont hat

But that one 'good' design will be different for each user. ;o)

Granted, if browsers just made doing all of this easier for the end-user, we wouldn't have to mess with these on-screen CSS swappers on our end.

19 Aug 2004 | Peter said...

I'd prefer that they not specify a body font and leave it to the visitor's browser setting. That's real choice, imho.

19 Aug 2004 | RS said...

Granted, if browsers just made doing all of this easier for the end-user, we wouldn't have to mess with these on-screen CSS swappers on our end.

The user shouldn't have to bother with any of this.

"Customization" and "personalization" are not excuses to offload design decisions to the user.

19 Aug 2004 | Mike D. said...

Alright, I should probably speak up since I'm the one who designed the Readability widget on ESPN in the first place.

1. There's only four comments so far and three of them seem to like the functionality so I guess that settles the question of whether there's any value to it.

2. We do pick a default typeface and typesize that we think you'll like (Verdana 11px) and it's probably true that most people don't change this. That's just great. Giving the user the freedom to explicitly override this though is just another bonus we like to provide. We've found the response has been quite positive.

3. If you've ever viewed text in PC/IE vs. OSX/Safari, you'll know that the display quality of different typefaces varies tremendously. For instance, in OS X, serif faces like Times even look great. But on a PC, they are borderline unreadable. Windows ClearType adds even more variables to the situation. Since it's not possible to tell if a user's system is using anti-aliased or smoothed text, we'd rather just let them decide for themselves.

4. As for the "clogging up of the page", I don't feel it takes up much real estate at all. As Donny said, it's difficult to even notice. We tried to strike a balance between not taking up valuable space and yet being noticeable. The end result is that if you visit ESPN once a month, you probably won't see it (or even need it). But all of our frequent readers view story pages many times a day and a lot of them seem to notice it. It is of greatest utility to frequent users anyway. Incidentally, my initial plan for this was to place the widget very prominently until you use it and then move it to the bottom of the right column since you'd probably only have to use it once. In the end, I thought this might be confusing.

5. If you think the ESPN Readability tools are overkill, you should see the one I put on my own site, Mike Industries. Not only do I let you pick your size and common fonts from a dropdown, but you can actually specify whatever font you have installed on your system. That, can probably rightfully be described as overkill, but it's benevolent overkill :)

19 Aug 2004 | JD said...

I tend to disagree.

I think their default font type/size selection is pretty good. And I for sure welcome the ability to change that if I wanted.

Remember, more options doesn't do harm if 'default' options are working.

So I don't think this option is 'excuse' to offload design decision. For that matter, everyone has their own personal favourite font and it's certainly a personalization option rather than design decision.

JD

19 Aug 2004 | Jeff Croft said...

I think I'll have to respectfully disagree here. I rather like the readability widgets. Granted, they probably aren't used by a huge percentage of the visitors, but they aren't taking anything away fro those folks, either. They take up almost no room on the page, don't distract from the content, and offer some degree of value 00 even if it's small.

If it was a tradeoff between this and something else, I may choose that something else. but it seems to me that Mike and ESPn have set this up such that it's an added feature without taking away from anything else. I'd say if even one person uses these, it was worth it.

19 Aug 2004 | RS said...

Not only do I let you pick your size and common fonts from a dropdown, but you can actually specify whatever font you have installed on your system. That, can probably rightfully be described as overkill, but it's benevolent overkill :)

Great phrase!

19 Aug 2004 | One of several Steves said...

One of the "problems" with CSS when it started seeing widespread use a few years back was that it acted in such a way that browsers' built-in text-size adjustment functionalities became useless. And very, very few sites/developers offered altnernate versions of CSS or programmed them in such a way that those text size adjustments became usable again.

I'm lucky that, even with being insanely nearsighted (I have to hold a standard newspaper about 3 inches from my face to read it if I don't have glasses on or contacts in), my correct vision is very sharp. So, small text works just fine for me, and I actually hate trying to read text that's too large.

But I'm in my mid-30s. A site like ESPN, while probably having the bulk of its users in ages between 10 and 40, is going to have a wide range of users, many of whom are getting older and whose eyes aren't what they used to be. Offering users the option to find a typeface and size that makes it easy for them to read what's in front of them seems like a pretty small and considerate thing to do. And ESPN's implementation doesn't add any clutter, IMO. It's just one more item in that sidebar. If anything denotes clutter, it's that sidebar itself, which has a lot more in there than just text adjustment.

19 Aug 2004 | Darrel said...

The user shouldn't have to bother with any of this.

"Customization" and "personalization" are not excuses to offload design decisions to the user.

No, not at all. But on the web, it's something the user CAN do and if they WANT to they should be allowed to.

Web design is about suggesting a design. What they do with that suggestion is up to them.

19 Aug 2004 | ML said...

Hey Mike D...thanks for commenting.

While I agree with you that this doesn't really take up that much real estate, I do think there's a disturbing trend at sites like ESPN, Amazon, and others to overwhelm people with options and links. While you can argue that each individual one doesn't take up much real estate, the cumulative effect of this information barrage seems at least a bit deleterious.

"Giving the user the freedom to explicitly override this though is just another bonus we like to provide. We've found the response has been quite positive."

Fair enough. As long as it's also viewed in the context of this question: Could we provide even more benefit to users by not even making them think about this design decision and instead letting them focus on the content of the page?

That said, I'll admit that the response so far does indicate that some people are digging the font choice option. Still, you've gotta wonder how typical this response is among "regular" people? As Didier comments at your site:

But I wonder if offering the level of font customization you write about is useful. This blog's audience, such as designer and coders out there, might give it a go. But what about the average user? Do they really care what font they are reading. I doubt if most average users even know the difference between Helvetica and Verdana, for example. As long as text is readable I think users do not care what font is used (within reason.)

19 Aug 2004 | Mike D. said...

ML:

The amount of clutter on major sites these days is a separate issue, and I agree with you on it. I can't say too much more about it because I don't want co-workers taping nasty notes to my monitor, but yes, there are a lot of links and ads on major sites these days. Most of these "options" are geared towards getting you to either buy something or look at other pages on the site. The readability widget, however, is not in this category at all. It serves the user and that's it.

As to the second question about not making users think about the decision decision, I don't feel like we are making them think about it as is. If we popped up a big alert box the first time you visited ESPN and didn't let you view the site until you picked a typeface and size, then sure. But the site renders just fine with no "thinking" involved... it's only the people who consciously decide they want to customize things who will even notice this technology.

19 Aug 2004 | Jennifer Grucza said...

I think it would be nice if the font options were each displayed using their font. Then users who don't remember font names would be able to see at a glance how the text would change (like MS Word's font dropdown). Of course, then you would have to use something other than a select box.

19 Aug 2004 | pb said...

Remember, more options doesn't do harm if 'default' options are working.

This is something I very much disagree with. People sometimes forget that the addition of options and features comes at a price. At a minimum there's design, coding, QA, maintenance, added complexity, cruft, reduced screen real estate, more bug-prone, etc.

20 Aug 2004 | sloan said...

If you consider web design to be similar to print, then I think user-selectable type faces is a bit of overkill. Font size should be selectable for different eyesite abilities, but type face? Should not, is not, the font chosen for your design PART of the design?

One principle that I think is important is reduction. And I just don't think that adding it is justified for the space it takes up. If it was important it would be higher up right? I have a real fear that as web technology evolves that there will be feature creep like this, maybe even to the point of Word 5. What would maybe be the better solution is for browsers to work with the CSS in a way that using the browsers menus for smaller and larger fonts connects to the CSS formatting directly. Really, this is a "feature" that should be at the browser level, we're at a weird tech point where what should be done via the page and what via the browser is a bit blurred.

20 Aug 2004 | nathan said...

selecting font size is a great option, but selecting the face is overkill. i know plenty of people with a 15'' 1600x1200 resolution laptop, and even text sized at 13px is eye straining, so they lower the resolution and then read blurred type.

ALL browser makers need to put their type resize options up front and center where a normal person will use them, and there should always be an option to make whatever zoom% the default.

maybe when IE 9.5 comes we won't need text sizers anymore :)

20 Aug 2004 | Mike D. said...

Sloan and nathan:

You guys are both commenting on how things should work in a browser, and I don't disagree with you. Unfortunately, that isn't how they do work, so instead, we provide the next-best solution. Could be overkill to you, so in that case, just don't use it. It certainly isn't hurting readability in any way.

Also, Sloan: Honestly, I don't consider body copy on the web to be part of the page design in the traditional sense at all. Just like I don't consider body copy in books to be part of the design. Body copy is supposed to do one thing and one thing only: allow itself to be read as easily as possible (unless your name is David Carson).

Please keep in mind you're talking to the person here who helped make typographically rich Flash headlines popular on the web. So you can rest assured I care a ton about smarted-crafted typography and its place in web design. I just consider body copy to play by entirely different rules than display type or other type embellishments. Body copy should be utilitarian by any and all means necessary. Display type and embellishments are where you have license to get creative.

20 Aug 2004 | ek said...

I actually agree with Darrel on this one, or at least I think I do.

He wrote:
Granted, if browsers just made doing all of this easier for the end-user, we wouldn't have to mess with these on-screen CSS swappers on our end.

Ideally, any text-intensive site should respect the text-display preferences set by a person via his or her browser. After all, if you need 30pt type to read ESPN.com, you probably also need 30pt type to read NYTimes.com. Site-specific type settings seem like a kludgy solution.

As a designer, this kind of sucks, but — at least in the case of content sites — I think we need to remember that we're working in the service of the people reading the site. Their needs should trump our need to control every single aspect of a given design.

On the other hand, as Darrel noted, most Web browsers don't make it very easy or obvious to people that it's possible to change their font face and size settings.

The chicken and egg problem here is that, since most CSS-driven sites lock in a specific font and size, changes made to type settings via the browser would have no apparent effect to John Q. Public.

It's a conundrum!

20 Aug 2004 | ek said...

Meant to finish my post off with: it's a conundrum! But at least the folks at ESPN.com are trying to do something about it.

It's not a perfect solution, but they're at the mercy of issues outside of their control.

20 Aug 2004 | Don Schenck said...

Why isn't Comic Sans listed as an option?

BWAHAHAHAHA ...

Options are good. No ... options are great. Just keep the eject button hidden (Alan Cooper). Provide good defaults.

20 Aug 2004 | DXO said...

I think it's absolutely great.
Do you guys say the opposite of the truth (i.e. a discreetly placed utility that provides nifty functionality and greater user control that takes up a tiny space on a huge webpage is "overkill") just to get a rise out of people?

20 Aug 2004 | Andy Travers said...

I'm a little bit perturbed at the rush to judgment (either way) on this.

I'm really intrigued that Mike D has implemented this on ESPN. As someone who works in web design I like to pretend I know a little bit about fonts and what my preferences are etc. So, my immediate thought was to wonder whether visitors would know what Verdana was.

I'd love to know whether over the next few months, ESPN visitors use this or not, and if they challenge our assumptions about what a readable font actually is to them.

Web design can be about "trying stuff and seeing what happens...". Mike - I'd love it if you revisited this either here or on mikeindustries in a couple of months and shared your take on the use of ESPN's font-choice.

20 Aug 2004 | ek said...

^ I second the above, great suggestion Andy.

20 Aug 2004 | wayne said...

I really like ESPN's " Lite" site. All the latest news without the over crowding and best of all, very few ads. The pages load MUCH faster.

20 Aug 2004 | Unearthed Ruminator said...

Aren't we supposed to use relative font sizes (small, medium, etc.) to let the users define sizes for themselves? (note the lack of comment on how "easy" it is for people to set this in their browsers...)

20 Aug 2004 | but that's just me said...

Thank you, Unearthed one, for noting that people can indeed choose font size in their browser. As I was reading the posts about how great the font size option was, that's what kept occurring to me.

At first I thought the typeface option was for printing purposes until I found that when you choose to print the article, it defaults to Times, so nevermind that theory. Hmm...I don't really see the purpose, but I don't think there's any harm done.

Don...thanks for the laugh! I have a client who always sends e-mails in Comic Sans...drives me insane!

20 Aug 2004 | said...

Aren't we supposed to use relative font sizes (small, medium, etc.) to let the users define sizes for themselves?

There is no right answer to this question at this point in time. That is the ideal solution in a perfect world, but that is based on the assumption that the end user has set up their default font size and/or also knows how to resize the font if they need to via their browser settings.

I don't really see the purpose

Well, its the fact that not everyone DOES do the above. When I rolled out new templates for our intranet, I placed an on-screen font resizer on the page. Several long time software and web developers--folks that you'd assume already know how to set default font sizes--would mention that as one of the greatest new features on the site as they can now size the type to their preferred size.

20 Aug 2004 | but that's just me said...

I actually meant that I didn't see the purpose in the typeface option, not the size option.

20 Aug 2004 | Mike D. said...

Andy:

The font selector has been live on ESPN.com for about a year now. So far this is the first forum or article I've read which asks if it's really worth anything or not. That's not to say it's a bad thing to question its value... I thank Matt for writing it up so we can all discuss it.

That said, as far as I know we haven't received a single user complaint about it. I don't have hard statistics on how many people use the feature, but we have about 15 million unique users so, ummm, if only 1% of people use it, that's 150,000 peeps. I have a feeling the number is substantially more than 1% though.

20 Aug 2004 | Darrel said...

I have a feeling the number is substantially more than 1% though.

Can you track that? That'd be interesting info.

20 Aug 2004 | Jeff said...

Selecting type size is a fine accessiblity option for a webpage, but I'd have to sift through a healthy dose of qualitative data to believe that users care one way or the other about selecting their own font. If Mike's got that under his belt, then I'll concede the point.

But expecting non-designers to know font names? Or to even see the difference between arial, verdana and lucida grande at body sizes? If the fonts switched without a page reload, they might be able to tell a difference, but given the abruptness with which the page disappears and then reappears, it seems to be a problem.

Even if the page switched smoothly, ala Zeldman's CSS switcher for example, there's still an implementation problem. Let's say I have Verdana selected on my PC. I switch to Lucida Grande. Since that font isn't available on a PC, what I get seems almost exactly the same (I think because it is). But since I'm not a web designer, I have no idea why it didn't work.

20 Aug 2004 | Mike D. said...

Jeff,

Again, the point here is not that typeface selection is of value to everyone. It is that it is of value to some people while being detrimental to no one. The typeface selection part of the widget takes up about 13 vertical pixels and 80 horizontal pixels (about the size of a normal text link) in an area of the screen where nothing else exists. I just don't see the logic in thinking it's bad. It's either inconsequential, or it's a godsend, depending on how particular you are about your typefaces. And even if non-designers aren't as familiar with typefaces as we designers are, there is definitely value in knowing, as a user, that you have some control over the display of the page.

Regarding the Lucida Grande issue, yes, it's probably better to only show this option to Mac users. It would be quite easy to do this... I just never bothered. :)

20 Aug 2004 | sloan said...

My main issue is that it is not consistently displayed on pages. Its there sometimes, others it is not. Putting it so far below the fold makes it seem like more of a toy than a utility (utilities should be highly accessible). You could save screen space at the top by making the size easy to change but the type face an extra layer or something. That said, I'm aware that the current state of things is less than ideal... but what would be the way to go? Would you want to control more of the browser? What would you want to control? Buttons? Menus? A separate nav bar space with page specific menus and buttons? Any ideas?

20 Aug 2004 | Darrel said...

An interesting link I just found:

What makes a good typeface?
Here are some answers.

1. What makes a good typeface is decided by the users, not the designer.

20 Aug 2004 | Darrel said...

Now, granted, 'users' could be defined as either the graphic designer or the end-user that is reading the page. Personally, I like to think it's both. ;o)

(and I really hate spammers for forcing 37sig to implement the time delay on subsequent posts...)

20 Aug 2004 | ML said...

I just don't see the logic in thinking it's bad.

Granted, it's a small thing on a big page. But little things add up. Every new feature has a cost. It's one more thing that users have to think about and figure out (especially on a site that is already overwhelming users with links/options). Sure, some features justify this cost. But it's important to acknowledge that there is a price, albeit minimal, to pay.

As Steve Krug says, "...when we're using the Web every question mark adds to our cognitive workload, distracting our attention from the task at hand. The distractions may be slight but they add up, and sometimes it doesn't take much to throw us."

20 Aug 2004 | David Schontzler said...

It's either inconsequential, or it's a godsend, depending on how particular you are about your typefaces.

It's a godsend. I love it.

20 Aug 2004 | pb said...

Sloan: If you consider web design to be similar to print

That's the faultiest assumption I've seen in a long while!!

ESPN Lite is the real godsend!!

I'd bet the feature is used be *less* than 1% of the users. Optional features with little impact on experience are generally very lightly used.

20 Aug 2004 | Mike D. said...

And don't forget about ESPN Ultra Lite for you jokers who REALLY don't want any toppings on your sundae:

http://pocket.espn.go.com

21 Aug 2004 | Devil's Advocate said...

Mike, you are right. You're just putting a little more design flexibility into the hands of the user.

But you have some more work to do. For example...

a) I don't like that jaded grey background. Please put in a widget so I can change it to the coffee colour I love.

b) I don't like the text colour you've chosen as default. I quite like my hot pink for text, thank you. Right now, I can't change it.

c) I don't like that big freaking skyscraper advertisement on the right bar. Please give me a tool to get rid of it.

d) While you're at it, please give me a way to change your layout. I don't like it.

Finally, make sure your site actually validates properly.

21 Aug 2004 | Devil's Advocate said...

Forgot to add... what the hell are FONT tags doing in your HTML, eh?

FONT tags?

21 Aug 2004 | Mike D. said...

Alright, now that the conversation has been lowered down to anonymous sarcastic posts linking to the W3C validator, I reckon I'm outta here. This has been a healthy discussion and I thank everyone for participating.

My advice: Use the readability tools if you wish. They are there for people who enjoy them and/or need them. If not, just use the site as you would any other site.

Thanks.

Mike

23 Aug 2004 | Darrel said...

But, really, what's up with the FONT tags? ;o)

23 Aug 2004 | Mike D. said...

The "font" tag that Mr. anonymous attempted to refer to is part of a javascript array which gets fed into Flash to create items in the ESPN Motion video playlist. Flash (unless you use version 7) supports only rudimentary HTML tags to style text, and hence, the font tag is necessary.

It is not part of the HTML structure of the page at all, and if the "devil's advocate" actually looked at the code, I'm sure he would have known that. It's much easier to just lob shells from the peanut gallery I guess.

Okay, now I'm really outta here...

30 Jan 2005 | compatelius said...

bocigalingus must be something funny.