The Two Types of Browser Zoom

I couldn’t agree less. Image+Text zoom was invented as a workaround for both lazy/inept web designers and Internet Explorer’s continued refusal to scale pixel-specified fonts. As others have commented, the original intent of text-only zoom was to allow those with poor eyesight to read content more easily, not to make everything bigger. Horizontal scrolling, which often occurs as a result of text+image zoom, is such a usability no-no that it should have been thrown out long ago. Seriously, what’s your problem with text-scaling on a well-designed layout? Any decent CSS guy can create a layout that won’t break for at least 2 increases (not sure where you get your ‘accepted web design guidance’ from, but I’ve never seen just 1 increment recommended). Just because a lot of people get it wrong, doesn’t mean we should all pander to an inferior workaround.

Forget IE8 Beta 2, it’s in IE7.

Full page zoom is horribly broken in IE7. Half the sites I used it on would exhibit terrible rendering artifacts, making the site almost un-navigable.

I’m a Firefox user, with a big monitor and bad eyes. I set my default font size way up, but I don’t need the images resized. Most websites work just fine; the few that don’t, well, they’re usually idiotic in other ways. The real fix is to not put characters in things with pixel sizes, but the Web Markup Gods have basically made this impossible.

I suspect that most people in my situation set their monitor resolution down, because that’s the only way Windows/IE can deal with the issue. That’s silly, though.

Firefox 3’s full page zoom can have pretty obvious artifacts too:
http://www.antipode.ca/2008/seeing-red-css-sprite-borders/ Apparently zooming layouts based on background images is a hard problem.

Where do you all get the horizontal scrolling from? I’m looking at this page at 200% now because I’m at my dinner table (across the room). No horizontal scrolling, just elements getting bigger…

vent
Also, although I reckon it sounds evangelistic, why doesn’t anybody ever give Opera the credits it deserves? Time after time they introduce great new stuff (full text zooming, awesome bar, mouse gestures, tabbed browsing etc) that years later earns some other browser tons of credits…
This is not a retorical question. Is it marketing? Is it user share?
/vent

Just because a lot of people get it wrong, doesn’t mean
we should all pander to an inferior workaround.

I love this. If developers can’t seem to do it the elegant way, they’re stupid. And their users? Screw 'em. They should be using Web pages designed by smarter people.

For once, I completely disagree with you, Jeff. There are two reasons that text-zooming is currently broken on the web. The first is that IE doesn’t support text resizing of pixel text sizes. This goes against the spec that defines px as a relative unit (yes, relative). [http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/syndata.html#length-units] note where px are listed under Relative Units. The second reason text resizing has failed is developer laziness. An em based layout will provide the same fluid-design functionality as a full page zoom. Even better, it leaves the ‘screen overflow’ issue in the control of the designer. Set a max width on the body element of 100% and allow the height to grow. Internal sub-elements can be made to grow horizontally to a certain max value. This would keep pages from growing beyond their borders and introducing the dreaded horizontal scrollbar. But thanks to lazy developers and IE (the combo responsible for the worst of the web) we get other half-wit solutions like full page zoom trying to pick up the slack.

Full page zoom is the first option I switch off after installing FF on new machines.

I like browsing with a larger text (+1, or even +2). I also like to read text in a narrow column - so much easier to the eyes.

On the other hand, a lot of websites these days use overly wide layouts, 1000px and more, and expect you to always maximise your browser. Full page zoom makes such websites even harder to navigate.

So is there a way to have it automatically use the full width of a high res monitor? (1920x1024). It would be interesting if fixed width pages could be enlarged to take advantages of the space.

Man, screw webpages. I want that for my OS. Why aren’t we using vector graphics for everything yet? Why do applications still look like distilled, concentrated butt when you increase the OS DPI?

I want variable DPI for my OS, and then I want ultra-high-DPI monitors. Then I’ll be happy.

How does page zoom affect flash movies and content?

Firefox’s full page zoom sucks. For ease on my eyes, I view everything at +4 and higher. Most sites work. The ones that don’t, too bad. +4 with image resizing means everything has hugely pixelated garbage everywhere, so I have [x] Zoom Text Only set. Works for me most of the time.

It’s not just web apps that have problems with overlarge fonts though. These problems are everywhere. Excuse me for liking 16 to 18 pt. fonts for everything instead of the default 9. I don’t like sitting 6 in front of my monitor to read the damn thing. That’s why I bought a giant ass monitor.

I have a giant ass monitor, AND I run everything maximized 100% of the time.

Jeff, this is the default on Chrome2 (the dev branch) now also.

I wish more browsers would take the lead from Firefox 3, and adopt full page zoom as the new default page sizing method.

Opera and Firefox 3 support it, who cares if no one else does. Everyone with any real interest in browsing installs one of these as soon as they have finished installing their OS. Web users have to vote with their feet.

Your entire post seems to make the assumption that the base view is something you can know more than just for your browser on your system, as if you know not only the hardware and software particulars of all your readers, but also their personal preferences (what size they’re running their desktop at, what font they pick for their default, and what size they like to run it at).

I agree that full-page zooming is nice, but it doesn’t obviate the need for smart design.

Chrome and safari misses this feature as they’re using webkit layout engine. Zoom with Gecko is really awesome
As you tweeted in twitter, Chrome is no equivalent to FF 3 . When I had an early review, I just mentioned this in one of blog post

http://sarathc.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/early-review-on-google-chrome-beta/

But actually Firefox’s zoom is best done with
cntl-mousewheel! Then you just keep rolling until its the size you want.

Also, a huge use for me… zooming into images in web pages. If the source image is higher res, you’ll see the extra resolution as you zoom in, without having to manually save the image or whatever.

If the source image is higher res, you’ll see the extra resolution as you zoom in, without having to manually save the image or whatever

Isn’t this only true if the image was downscaled by the browser IMG tag? Seems unlikely to me, as this is a pretty dangerous practice, but I suppose…

I was an avid reader of codinghorror, but in the last 2 months quality went down so much with posts like this.

WebKit has had full page zoom since March - however there are no public (as in not alpha, beta or developer release) products I am aware of that are presently using a version new enough yet.

Products that do have it that aren’t public that I know of:
WebKit nightlies - Safari with the latest WebKit builds. Currently at r40000. I find it suitably stable for my self and use it because of the sheer speed compared to other browsers.

Chrome 2.0 - Having updated their version of WebKit to roughly r39410 (alongside their own changes) has Full Page Zoom as stated above.

Safari 4.0 Developer Preview - Available free from Apple if you make an Apple Developer account.

FullPageZoom however in Safari 4 and the WebKit nightlies needs to be turned manually:
http://webkit.org/blog/165/full-page-zoom/ (March 21st, 2008)