PQ Fonts and spacing

[+lodgebarn 47]

Am I dreaming or has the font size and spacing just been increased on the PQ page and associated cache preview list? If so I think it should be reverted. I have even more scrolling now and cache name on three or four lines where two at most should be required. When looking at the PQ list the blurb at the top, we don't even need to see that at all,  now takes most of the screen. Call me old fashioned but I could read the previous pages with no problem whatsoever. Bigger and spaced out is not really better, that is what zoom levels are for.

[+StefandD 52]

I see the same on the friends list. Where there used to be 2 columns, there's only 1 now.

[+Team Microdot 964]

I'm seeing font changes on the dashboard page and on the owned caches page.

 

I thought I'd screwed up my browser settings somehow.

 

I wish they'd stop making pointless changes - especially when it makes stuff harder to read.

[+Isonzo Karst 387]

PC Windows, running Firefox.

Thanks for starting the thread, I was wondering if I was imaging things.  I don't see actual font changes,  but I do see wider s p a c i n g between letters, (except in user generated text fields, like cache descriptions) and marginally lighter font color (?).  Links in logs are nigh impossible to discern given the color shift and that they're not underlined.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Isonzo Karst

[+baer2006 279]

It's on almost all pages. To me it looks as if some "standard" font setting in a common CSS has been changed to a slightly larger font.

@GS: If this was unintentional, please revert the change. And if it was intentional, revert it as well . Thanks!

[+Twinklekitkat 31]

Agree with what's already been said.  Please change it back!!  Friends list,  found caches list, etc.  Why would any of us want to scroll more????  Wrap text looks horrible on found caches list in the 'Found by User' column to be specific.  One column of friends when there is clearly room for two.  Why make this change?  What was the point?

 

Everyday there is some new change to this site.  It's hard to keep up.

[+J Grouchy 597]

Yeah...looking at my found list and it's all screwy.  Stuff that used to fit on one line get's wrapped to two.  Zooming doesn't help.

 

 

[+Viajero Perdido 344]

Who's messing with the CSS?

 

It's uglier.

 

Just throwing my opinion onto the pile.

[+Harry Dolphin 444]

11 hours ago, baer2006 said:

It's on almost all pages. To me it looks as if some "standard" font setting in a common CSS has been changed to a slightly larger font.

@GS: If this was unintentional, please revert the change. And if it was intentional, revert it as well . Thanks!

Yes!!  Please!!

[+Mineral2 155]

I don't think the font has been changed so much as the width of the content area has been limited, making text in certain cells wrap onto a second line.

[+Big Zed 1]

My found list used to look really nice with two lines of text for each cache. Now the font appears to be bigger. The table columns are too narrow too and this forces some text onto more than two lines. I also don't like the way my cache pages are formatted now. Why the changes? I think the old formatting looked a lot better. Please put it back.

[+minstrale 2]

Was speaking with several friends about this and we're simply confounded why Groundspeak would increase the font size across the board, negating the untold hours COs have put into the layout of their pages. Where once we had streamlined text with plenty of open, airy space, we now have widows, orphans, cramped leading, and seemingly endless scrolling. It's as though someone new came in and said, "Let's make everything bigger" with no regard for the consequences. 

 

In addition, many puzzles that depend on number of characters, words, and lines, simply no longer work. And puzzle owners who have gone out of their way to insert custom line breaks, find their paragraphs no longer match the standard text width of the page, which all but screams the solution.

 

Groundspeak, if you're listening, we love geocaching. We enjoy the reviewers, the lackeys, and the forward-looking nature of the organization. But please respect the thought and heart owners put into their pages by reversing this giant step backwards. Thank you.

 

 

Edited May 12, 2018 by minstrale

[+barefootjeff 1162]

Is it just my imagination or has the cache page width shrunk as well? I'm sure a lot more of my background images are now exposed and everything on the cache page itself looks scrunched.

 

Edit to add: Am I going mad or have the cache pages just changed back to the way they were?

Edited May 12, 2018 by barefootjeff
Punctuation

[+noncentric 692]

Noticed this recently and thought I'd adjust, but the more I see then the more I'm irritated by it.  My eyes just don't like it. And then I went to add a cache to a list and saw that the list names were cut-off at the bottom. Argghhh!

It seems like a font/spacing formula that works for most 'new' pages was applied to all pages across the board, but that formula doesn't actually work with the 'old' pages.  The new dashboard looks fine and the new lists look fine, but the old versions of these pages look odd.

 

Add my name to the list of those that would appreciate having this change be rolled back!

 

Some examples of where the new font/spacing formula is unattractive:

 

[+Wacka 16]

Well. I can read the text better than I could before.  I have the beginnings of cataracts and have problems with contrast.  You'll want larger fonts and more contrast the older you get.

[+on4bam 499]

Setting the fontsize to 98% while using Tampermonkey and GC little Helper II gets all caches back on 1 line.

 

[+noncentric 692]

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the blue text is lighter than it used to be and is harder to read. For me, at least.

 

I'm also finding it harder to distinguish between blue links (not clicked yet) and purple links (already clicked).

[+noncentric 692]

15 hours ago, Wacka said:

Well. I can read the text better than I could before.  I have the beginnings of cataracts and have problems with contrast.  You'll want larger fonts and more contrast the older you get.

I suppose the readability for those with eyesight issues was the impetus for making the changes, however, I also think that if the font size was increased, then column widths should've increased as well.  But, since columns are mostly on the pages that have not been "re-designed", then I think they were not considered, which I find disappointing.

 

For example, the 'old' field notes page.  The font size was increased, but the column was not widened to allow "Didn't find it" to fit on one line. Which means, more scrolling because each row is sized to account for the largest size needed.

Edited May 14, 2018 by noncentric

[+Harry Dolphin 444]

And then you run into this on some archived caches.  The tops of the letters on the next line show up as dots.

[+Team Microdot 964]

Well so far, whatever changed seems to have made a royal mess of things.

[+Harry Dolphin 444]

9 hours ago, Wacka said:

Well. I can read the text better than I could before.  I have the beginnings of cataracts and have problems with contrast.  You'll want larger fonts and more contrast the older you get.

I had cataract surgery fifteen years ago.  (Went from 20/1200 to 20/30.)  As such, I have problems with computer screens.  I detest the modern tendency to shrink fonts.  I have severe trouble with those fonts.  But these new, enlarged fonts are tougher for me to read.  I don't like them!!  

[+thebruce0 1116]

If there are problems with HTML content, individuals have the option to use accessibility options to override default display settings, rather than the web devs assuming that every user of a website requires something like larger font.

 

On a similar note, if this was a font styling change implemented because more mobile users are viewing the website proper, the web devs should be providing separate desktop and mobile styles, not forcing a mobile design on desktop users, or vice versa.

 

I'm relieved to see someone made a thread about this - I also thought something changed with my browser having just applied a browser update.  Wasn't too impressed the universal style change...

[+lodgebarn 47]

I am most disappointed that there has been no comments so far from Groundspeak about a change that is both unwanted and absent from any release notes. 

[+lodgebarn 47]

 

18 hours ago, Wacka said:

Well. I can read the text better than I could before.  I have the beginnings of cataracts and have problems with contrast.  You'll want larger fonts and more contrast the older you get.

 

9 hours ago, Harry Dolphin said:

I had cataract surgery fifteen years ago.  (Went from 20/1200 to 20/30.)  As such, I have problems with computer screens.  I detest the modern tendency to shrink fonts.  I have severe trouble with those fonts.  But these new, enlarged fonts are tougher for me to read.  I don't like them!!  

 

I understand completely that you need to see bigger characters, however the in built operating system features and browser zooming levels provide this for you. The latest change makes all normal computers at standard resolutions truly awful.

[+HHL 301]

This is a pretty idiotic layout:

 

 

Hans

[+Team Microdot 964]

3 minutes ago, HHL said:

This is a pretty idiotic layout:

 

 

Hans

 

Crikey - that IS a mess!

[+thebruce0 1116]

Yet still no web release notes, even, to explain that there was a change?

[+Team Microdot 964]

Wonder if someone has deleted / renamed / moved a file by mistake?

[+J Grouchy 597]

On 5/13/2018 at 8:13 AM, Wacka said:

Well. I can read the text better than I could before.  I have the beginnings of cataracts and have problems with contrast.  You'll want larger fonts and more contrast the older you get.

If you hold the CTRL button while rolling the scroll button on a mouse, you can zoom the webpage.  This method is better than what they have done to mess the pages up since it scales up everything on the page, not just the text.

[+on4bam 499]

14 minutes ago, J Grouchy said:

If you hold the CTRL button while rolling the scroll button on a mouse, you can zoom the webpage.  This method is better than what they have done to mess the pages up since it scales up everything on the page, not just the text.

Or CTRL + (CRTL 0 to restore/CTRL - to zoom out).

 

[+The A-Team 967]

I was pretty shocked when I saw the new font. There have been numerous posts in these forums pointing out the accessibility issues that have arisen from previous style changes. This new one, which lightens the text and changes the size such that readability is reduced in many places, further exacerbates the issue for no apparent gain. This has all the hallmarks of an unintended change, with someone haphazardly changing a CSS file somewhere, neglecting to notice that this would affect the entire site. If this was in fact intentional, then it feels like laziness where a site-wide CSS rule was modified rather than simply setting up new rules for the new use-cases and leaving the existing ones alone. Either way, it isn't good and we all suffer as a result.

[+J Grouchy 597]

Looks like they've fixed the problem!

 

 

[+The A-Team 967]

7 minutes ago, J Grouchy said:

Looks like they've fixed the problem!

Maybe in that one spot, but I'm still seeing the larger, light-blue text all over the site, as well as a number of other font face, size, kerning, and colour changes that have reduced readability across-the-board.

 

It's nice to see that the developers' time is being prioritized on the things that really need to be done...

Edited May 15, 2018 by The A-Team

[+P98 0]

I have a very carefully written puzzle that now is "broken" by the new font size... Ugh.

[+Mineral2 155]

57 minutes ago, P98 said:

I have a very carefully written puzzle that now is "broken" by the new font size... Ugh.

You can control the font size on your cache description.

[+Viajero Perdido 344]

53 minutes ago, Mineral2 said:

You can control the font size on your cache description.

 

But you can't control people like me who choose specific fonts in their browser as an override.  (I don't do that to be difficult, just to improve readability.)

 

I also see people speccing Windows fonts like Comic Sans, which non-Windows systems may not have.  (Hello from Linux!)

 

The only way to absolutely guarantee the exact font you want is to (ugh!) post a screenshot of that text, or something similarly rigid like (ugh!) a PDF.

 

Edited August 28, 2018 by Viajero Perdido

[+P98 0]

2 hours ago, Mineral2 said:

You can control the font size on your cache description.

Thanks for your reply!

 

But if the CSS also changes the gutters or width of the page/frame, etc. it all falls apart.  I just wound up re-writing the text to make it work again with the default settings.

 

I'm not an HTML whiz.  What would be the way to make the font 95% of "standard" size?

[+dprovan 740]

1 hour ago, Viajero Perdido said:

The only way to absolutely guarantee the exact font you want is to (ugh!) post a screenshot of that text, or something similarly rigid like (ugh!) a PDF.

I certainly agree with your negative reaction to those approaches in general, but it could be a good solution, or at least an acceptable compromise, for a puzzle that depends on the exact layout. After all, an exact layout as designed by the web page designer is the exact opposite of what HTML was supposed to be for, although you'd never know it looking at the web today. You must have a devil of a time just doing something simple like picking your own font without messing up lots of web pages. Hard to believe HTML was intended to allow systems that didn't even have the concept of "font" present the information in a way suitable to the reader's environment.

[Blue Square Thing 76]

29 minutes ago, P98 said:

Thanks for your reply!

 

But if the CSS also changes the gutters or width of the page/frame, etc. it all falls apart.  I just wound up re-writing the text to make it work again with the default settings.

 

I'm not an HTML whiz.  What would be the way to make the font 95% of "standard" size?

 

You'd go something along the lines of:

 

<p style="font-size:95%;">Your text here</p>

 

That will change just the paragraph you're working on. To change the entire description the best way would be to go:

 

<div style="font-size:95%;">

<p>Para 1</p>

<p>Para2</p>

etc...

<p>Para last</p>

</div>

 

Whether that would have the desired result though I'm not sure - and, as others have said, all it takes is an odd system or a user defined style sheet and you're up the creek again. In that case I'd probably opt for the image option if the text wasn't too long. If it were longer then PDF is probably the best option.

Edited August 28, 2018 by Blue Square Thing

[+Team Microdot 964]

Don't suppose this might help?

 

https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_pre.asp

[+niraD 1307]

37 minutes ago, Blue Square Thing said:

Whether that would have the desired result though I'm not sure - and, as others have said, all it takes is an odd system or a user defined style sheet and you're up the creek again. In that case I'd probably opt for the image option if the text wasn't too long. If it were longer then PDF is probably the best option.

It doesn't have to be that odd. All the browsers I use support a minimum font size setting. Most of the time, my setting has no effect. But for sites that try to specify microfonts, it forces a normal size font.

[Blue Square Thing 76]

2 minutes ago, niraD said:

It doesn't have to be that odd. All the browsers I use support a minimum font size setting. Most of the time, my setting has no effect. But for sites that try to specify microfonts, it forces a normal size font.

 

Sure - heck, I even use an old version of Opera sometimes. That's bound to do odd things.

[+P98 0]

Thank you all for your input!