Good typography on the Internet: is it even possible?

Bend Over Backwards?

As every experienced Web designer should know all too well, good online page design involves more than just making things look right in their preferred browser. As many viewers are likely to be using PCs, and as various versions of both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator are widely used, pages need to be checked in as many popular browsers as possible.

But just how far should someone go towards making their pages work across every conceivable kind of browser? Should they design to fit the lowest common denominator, ensuring that the site works on everything from the latest G4s and Pentiums down to WebTV machines and Palm devices? And what about those that like to use small monitors set to the highest possible resolution, or have large monitors set to 640x480 pixels?

While it is wise to consider the different kinds of computers and browsers people will use to see your site, the concept of total portability is often overstressed.

One of the key techniques for formatting HTML text locks it to a fixed size, neatly bypassing the problem where PC browsers prefer to show fonts significantly larger than Mac browsers. (For more details see .) However this also disables the option found in certain browser to scale text sizes up and down on the fly. Some users may complain about this, but there is a simple (although somewhat contentious) answer to this. If someone would like to see fonts larger on their screen, they need to see everything else larger as well - from menus and error messages to file and folder names - in which case they should consider changing their monitor’s resolution, not fiddling with the way a site is shown in their browser. And if a page design which works well for most people doesn’t look good on a hand-held pocket browser, this isn’t necessarily a cause for concern - it all depends on the intended audience.

If you are faced with such problems there are generally three choices you can take. You can compromise the layout to fit all possible viewers (which may mean starting from scratch and losing most design finesse), design alternative versions tailored to different requirements (which adds to design and maintenance workloads), or produce something which works well on the majority of viewers at the expense of a few (which just dodges the issue).

Next: Conclusion...