Font-size Limbo | CSS-Tricks

You may remember Alvaro recommends burp font-size To 1.25rem from the default user agent size of 16px. Sebastian Laube comes to this conclusion:

I would not simply adopt Alvaro’s suggestion, as it would waste a lot of space on a smartphone, for example, and many users would probably be bothered by the large font.

I set a font size of 1.2rem from a certain viewport size. But here too, you have to proceed with caution, because then grey areas arise in which media queries suddenly fall back into another area…

Personally, I agree with Alvaro that the 16px Size is too small. It makes me feel like someone who would almost wear the bottom of real Coke bottles to be able to see something clearly on a screen.

On the other hand, I agree with Sebastian on the technical side, not that many users are likely to be annoyed by the large font, but it is better to openly question an approach than to adopt someone else’s approach on the basis of a single blog post. It may well be that a font-size Bump is the right approach. Everything is relativeand we should listening to the people who use the things we make for decisions like this.

The much bigger question is the one Sebastian asks at the very end:

Should browsers on large screens perhaps use a larger font size from the start unless the user specifies otherwise? Or is an information campaign needed to make users aware that they should check their system settings or set a different default font size in the browser?

Fantastic, right?! I’m honestly not sure where to put the viewport breakpoint for 16px is either too big or too small and where to start with the adjustments. Is 16px the correct default at each viewport size? Or should user agents instead perhaps consider an implementation of Fluid Type that defines a default font size and size range? That’s good food for thought.

Direct link →