Pardon my UI / CSS ignorance but these days I find that I have to zoom in every single article on the web to read it comfortably. I had to zoom this article at 200%. The default text is just too small and I am just using a standard HD display. It would be even smaller on higher resolutions. Do people not view their own website? Does everybody else also find themselves zooming in most of the web pages. What am I missing?
The vast majority of web designers are clueless or just don't care about font size recommendations. Most studies recommend at least 18 px for body text, but almost every website goes smaller. Medium is a notable exception, they have sane defaults.
I have the opposite problem. I tend to zoom out since huge font sizes became a trend a few years ago. They're so humongous that it's very tiring to read at the default size. This is especially pronounced on websites like Medium, where I have the zoom set to 80 % permanently.
It's an impossible problem to solve because sizes are given in pixel or percentage. Whatever you try to adjust, it will be utterly wrong on some combination of content and display.
Yes, it's great for focusing on content. I wish I could enable the reader view by default for a list of sites. Or even better, the browser does so automatically when a page has lots of text and is not responsive/is too small.
Funny you say that because i find the font size used by that site to be the most comfortable for me (and i have far from a good sight...) and i really dislike sites that use huge letters (like f.e. Medium). Then again, i prefer small font sizes in general and i dislike the tendency to waste space in modern UIs - both web-based and desktop (and mobile, but i don't use that much and in mobile it is kinda of acceptable because fingers - although i'd really like it if mobiles came with a stylus instead and adjusted their UIs accordingly).
I'd been doing this a lot lately and thought it might be time for a new prescription on my lenses. Maybe it's just poor UX after all. I've never been a "content should be completely separate from presentation" guy, but recent design choice by websites have pushed me further in that direction.
