font-size Limbo

You might recall that Alvaro suggests bumping up font-size to 1.25rem from the default user agent size of 16px. Sebastian Laube pokes at that:

I wouldn’t adopt Alvaro’s suggestion without further ado, as I would waste so much space on a smartphone, for example, and many users would probably be irritated by the large font.

I set a font size of 1.2rem from a certain viewport size. But this also has to be done carefully, because then grey areas arise in which media queries suddenly fall back into another area…

I personally agree with Alvaro that the default 16px size is too small. That’s just how I feel as someone who is uncomfortably close to wearing the bottoms of actual Coke bottles to see anything clearly on a screen.

On the flip side, I professionally agree with Sebastian, not that many users would probably be irritated by the large font, but to openly question an approach rather than adopting someone else’s approach wholesale based on a single blog post. It may very well be that a font-size bump is the right approach. Everything is relative, after all, and we ought to be listening to the people who use the thing we’re making for decisions like this.

The much bigger question is the one Sebastian poses right at the end there:

Should browsers perhaps use a larger font size on large screens from the outset if the user does not specify otherwise? Or do we need an information campaign to make them aware that they should check their system settings or set a different default font size in the browser?

Fantastic, right?! I’m honestly unsure where I’d draw the viewport breakpoint for 16px being either too large or small and where to start making adjustments. Is 16px the right default at any viewport size? Or perhaps user agents ought to consider a fluid type implementation that defines a default font scale and range of sizes instead? It’s great food for thought.

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