So, on November 3rd, I visited Facebook to do what I needed to do and for some reason, those I followed back had small text.
Small text as in 10 or 9 pixels.
As a web designer, I try to design websites using fonts as sizes that are user-friendly. Not only typography fanatics are appeased, but also people who may have problem with eyesight. Bifocals and trifocals are difficult to adjust to. I remember when my grandmother had first adjusted to her trifocals in her mid 60s (she is in her early 70s as of this very post) and she had trouble not just adjusting to reading at different angles, but even placing items at different spots.
Facebook is used by millions. When I was in high school, and this was in the late 1990s, I had been educated that over 65% of the population of the United States alone was over the age of 60. So, when I finally became a web design, I had the learning opportunity that anything under 12 pixels Arial was unacceptable for older audiences.
Eventually, it was drilled into my head that web accessibility, at least as much as I could do as a web designer, was something even the best coding ninja of the web design world needed to achieve. Of course, I have my faults as I really have issues with Internet Explorer and why it has not caught up with rounded corners (aka border-radius), as well as a few others, based on plugins by other WordPress developers that have failed to respect the most current HTML, XHTML, and even CSS validations published by W3C.
Facebook is NOT above web accessibility. While Facebook has hundreds of millions of users, it needs to comply to some of the web accessibilities out there- become somewhat user-friendly
Like MySpace, Facebook uses and iframe to open a new window to applications developed by outside and even inside sources, like games, questionnaires, and more.
How can you make a difference to be able to tell Facebook that you want a little more leeway on web accessibilitty? -Contact, blog, even reply to their own status!!!
On one hand, I understand them very well, they need to paste as much information, buttons, and additional "features" as possible into one page without need for you to endlessly scroll the page in different directions. On the other hand, having at least option of enlarging fonts or choosing layout that corresponds to your site and reading preferences, would be great.
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As much as I love Facebook and would probably die if someone took it away, I agree with you that they just keep making mistake after mistake. It seems like every other week FB is in the news for some privacy issue, or they made a change and now people can't access their virtual farms (I hate those games and updates from all my friends btw).
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I like to play FB games, but I have had to make sure my personal profile wall has ME on front and my followers who post on another tab. It is really annoying, especially if a portion of my gaming followers are posting more than a 25 postings on my wall. I usually do not post on a wall for gaming. If I have one accidentally posted, it is gone within a day….lol
I have blogged in the past about Facebook’s privacy issues and other Facebook Fail topics. My profile and my fan pages for myself and some of the sites I run are pretty transparent. However, I do appreciate and respect those who like to at least feel like they have some things in their life sacred and not blasted to the world.
That's very nice of you to take care of those ones that have vision problems! I don't have any eyesight issues but I think too that sometimes fonts' sizes or opened windows are a way too small…I'm just wondering what other people might think when they see(or don't see) that…
When I read your post, I immediately opened up my Facebook account to see if the fonts were really small. I guess, I never noticed it until today that, yes, their text are indeed quite small. Although this can be made bigger by pressing on CTRL and + on your PC, not everyone knows this, so this could really pose a problem for those who have problems with their eyesight.
I do hope somebody will see your post, Nile and act on getting Facebook user-friendly quick. Thanks for the post.
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heres a simple fix, a browser addon called FB Purity adds an option to increase the font size, it also lets you block other annoying stuff from your newsfeed and homepage, its received great reviews from CNET, Lifehacker and PCWorld, you can get it here: http://www,fbpurity.com