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from the You-May-Be-Younger,-But-I-Have-Better-Insurance dept.
(Disclaimer: I wrote the article Creating Online Environments That Work Well For Older Users but suspect that many Soylentils will find it useful.)
A significant part of the Internet-using population is aged 50 or older — including the people who invented it. Web designers need to understand what older users need and why it's not enough to just say, "I can read it, so what's the problem?"
If you're my age you have no doubt run into more than a few web sites that are just plain useless, either because you can't read the text, or because they were designed using assumptions that those of us over forty years of age don't find useful. Whether it's our need for high contrast text, or our preference for actual words and paragraphs over video, the needs of older users often get ignored.
We are the generation that invented and grew up with personal computers. It's absurd to suggest that we are less capable of using technology. In other words, you can't complain about old people not understanding tech, and then also complain that they've taken over Facebook and Twitter. Besides, we also usually have lots more disposable income, so catering to our needs is good for business.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @12:14AM (5 children)
I find that Chrome's ability to zoom in on pages is really helpful for those of us with deteriorating eyesight. Unfortunately, both SoylentNews and Slashdot are coded in a way that screws that up. The page notes that we are zooming, and then "helpfully" shrinks all the columns to counteract that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @03:11AM (3 children)
Responsive zoom isn't magnify. It is designed to keep the relative page flow while proportionally increasing the size of the content. If you want a magnification, then you need to set the browser to not change your viewport size on zooming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @06:36PM (2 children)
I just looked at the Chrome settings, and could find anything like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @06:40PM (1 child)
"I just looked at the Chrome settings, and could find anything like that."
I just looked at the Chrome settings, and could NOT find anything like that. My vision is bad and my proofreading also sucks!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @09:40PM
Just put out a feeler to a friend of mine, apparently there has been a couple bugs sitting open for 10 years about that on the bug tracker. Apparently, their position is that people can use the built-in OS tools to accomplish magnification or hack around it by passing a bunch of command-line options or custom CSS (or switching browsers). So maybe give those a look.
(Score: 2) by TrentDavey on Sunday November 24 2019, @11:40PM
I want an "unzoom". Half the damned pages that come up are optimized for a phone when I'm always using a laptop: huge Gd'ed text, huge Gd'ed images.. uugh.
Get off my lawn but shovel the snow in the driveway first.