In my ongoing attempt to understand the consequences of plunking down hundreds of dollars for a new monitor (which, I am told, would allow me to use a higher resolution than my current 800×600 without having to wear glasses), I have gotten myself more confused than ever. What I do not want to do is spend money only to find that I have the same problem. Right now (with my 19 inch Dell LCD monitor), 1024×768 means tiny fonts, while 800×600 means easily readable fonts. Commenters suggested that I simply change to a higher resolution, then change the settings to larger fonts. When I did that (from the default 96 dpi setting to 120 dpi) the fonts changed — they became skinny and spindly and abnormal — and very uncomfortable for me to read.
The bottom line is that I want to see what I see now, except without the damned and dreaded horizontal scrolling problem which results from the fact that web designers have now largely abandoned support for idiots like me who still insist on using 800×600. Intuitively, it would seem that a larger monitor might solve the problem and enable me to see the fonts at a 1024×768 resolution the way I see them now, but I want to be sure, as I don’t want to have to enlarge the fonts and end up with the distorted ones.
Reading about the flaming debates over typefaces and fonts convinces me that on this issue I am very much a conservative:
Typography is a skill and an art. It is also very conservative. The letter shapes that we refer to as “modern type” are in fact over 150 years old. There is some justification for this conservatism: we have not yet fully understood the physical and psychological aspects of reading. To illustrate this, sans serif typefaces have, since their inception in 1816, inspired numerous flaming debates about the legibility and aesthetics. But even today, although we are now amply accustomed to sans serif letters and although numerous experiments have been conducted, there is no consensus on whether sans serif fonts improve or decrease legibility. The large amount of research on the subject is inconclusive.
Our typographic knowledge evolves this slow, because reading performance is difficult to measure. Reading is a very intelligent behaviour. Even when letters are barely decodable, we read the text without much difficulty since we see the letters in their context. One way to test the appropriateness of a typeface is to pull the letters out of their context. For this purpose, you can either use nonsense texts (the most famous of these texts starts with “Lorem ipsum dolor”), or use a standard text with deliberate spelling errors (proofreading tests).
The criticism on these tests is that people do not read individual letters. The eye picks groups of letters or even complete words. Studies on reading for comprehension attempt to simulate the real reading process by testing how much people understand from texts they just read and by measuring their fatigue. Getting decisive results from tests on reading for comprehension is, however, rather difficult. Objectively measuring fatigue is not easy and what people understand from a text is influenced by what they already know.
This certainly explains why I want to see the same style of characters that I have grown accustomed to having for the past decade or so. Distorted skinny characters are fatiguing to read, and I don’t want them in my life or on my screen.
However, I am told that 1024×768 is “better.” I have tried it repeatedly, and all it gives me is a bigger overall picture on the screen, and whether the details are any finer doesn’t matter if I can’t see the details without glasses. For example, if I open up the home page of this blog, there’s more open space and tinier type. What is “better” about that? I only want clear, easy to read text (the same as what I am seeing now), minus horizontal scrolling.
I hope a new monitor will give me that, but I worry that I’m missing something else, but I don’t understand what.
Comments
13 responses to “Objective fatigue from a conservative viewpoint”
Eric, Happy New Year, anyway I bought an Acer P205h Monitor, 20″ wide screen and I run it at 1600×900 which is its “native” resolution.
Sadly I have to wear glasses for reading, and I understand your frustration but your website looks great, as do most I go to, and boy the movies look Great! Oh yea, my main point,Staples 120$ with a 20$ instant rebate,why pay more?
I’m one of those who doesn’t absolutely have to wear glasses for reading books, and what I like about the Internet is that I don’t need to wear glasses to read blogs. I don’t want to lose that feature, and I don’t want to lose the fonts to which I have grown attached.
I’m thinking I should find a store which will allow me to spend some time online with any monitor they’re trying to sell.
I used to feel the same way about resolution and I always had to go in and change it from the default.
Right now it’s at 1280×720 and it’s pretty small, but I can read it okay.
If you’re mostly worried about your browser, can you hit “ctrl ++” to embiggen the view?
I do that for some sites and pics.
What you want is a 16:9 ratio monitor with a 20″ diagonal. They are common nowadays among the LCDs. It will actually be very slightly smaller than your CRT.
You will then set your computer to use the native resolution of the monitor, which will probably be something like 1700 x 960. (Flat panels of all types should be used at native resolution to avoid aliasing effects that make the type hard to read.) This will produce type 2/3 the size of what you see now, with ample horizontal space.
If you can’t read it easily, use your browser’s magnification function — Control-scrollwheel in FireFox, Control-keypad-plus in IE — to enlarge type, images, and all while staying at the monitor’s native resolution. The second step, 150%, will give you what you have now in the vertical direction with, effectively, 1000 or so horizontal pixels.
The only snag is if your video card or onboard video subsystem doesn’t offer the panel’s native resolution as an option. You might right-click on the desktop, go to Properties -> Settings, and see what resolutions are on offer before monitor shopping. It might be time for a new video card.
Regards,
Ric
“the fonts changed — they became skinny and spindly and abnormal — and very uncomfortable for me to read.”
In Windows itself(I’m using Win7), I left the overall text size the same but bumped up the font size for the various sections of the windows – menu items, window text, etc. If you stick with truetype fonts the shapes of the fonts should remain the same just look bigger.
In firefox when I zoom a page the font stays the exact same the letter just get bigger. I have run across a few sites that zoom mangles, but they are few and far between.
I’ve noticed most ‘office’ type applications use the + scroll wheel zoom feature now too. Wordpad, notepad, openoffice, etc.
I’m afraid that aging is not being kind to you. Know I’m used to wearing glasses, because I need them to see. But I can understand your reluctance to wear them.
Have you tried changing the font in preferences in the browser you use? At present I’m using Times at 16 points with a screen resolution of 1440×900 on a 17″ screen.
All this talk about monitors is very nice, but What you should be doing is finding out if scUM is firing RRod.
If I were buying a new monitor now, I would get one with 1080p native resolution (1920×1080), with a physical size as large as would fit on my desk. I would probably get another Viewsonic graphics monitor for the quality of the display, although I haven’t researched monitors recently.
How large physically? As large as would fit my current desk, which would be about 23 or 24 inches.
(If money were no object, I might consider getting a second monitor, a large trinitron, for working with photos.)
IMHO, skimping on the size and quality of your computer monitor is like buying a fancy hi-fi system — and skimping on the speakers.
(My current monitor is a Viewsonic VG2030wm with 1680×1050 resolution, and it’s fine for reading text, including the text at this site.)
Thanks for all the helpful comments. When I have tried TrueType fonts, they seem blurrier than the native fonts. My Desktop preferences only go as high as 1280×1024, although there are four “shapes” offered. It’s a bit ridiculous to have to buy a new video card just to use a new monitor so I hope I don’t have to do that. What would really gall me would be to go through all this hassle only to find new and irritating fonts. I do not want them to change; I only want to end the need for horizontal scrolling.
Alan I can wear glasses to read books, but I don’t need them online, and if I do try wearing them online the eyestrain is unendurably awful.
Dr. K. I am told by inside sources that RRod is history, but they have to wait another month to officially can him, in order to save $1.5 million on the contract.
You could try the Opera web browser. It has a “fit to Width” function that reduces the need for horizontal scrolling.
As a WVU alum & fan, I have to confess to being more pleased than is probably appropriate to hear the talk of RRod’s potential firing. Granted, the schadenfreude would be more fun if we had done better in the interim, but still…
More on topic, I always appreciate web designs that scale with browser/screen width. Isn’t part of the web’s advantage over hard-copy publishing its flexibility? Designers who force everyone to view a site exactly how they want it are missing the point, I think.
Visit sites that have a ‘mobile’ option. yes, an option for those teeny-tiny screens on smartphones.
Those sites put lots in a little, mostly text, so it can be seen from a tiny screen. Sounds a lot like what you are trying to do.
Then there is wondows accessability tools – a screen magnifier…
but an independent cuss like you needs to try the mobile sites…e.g.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/
BTW, try Ctrl-+ in Firefox or Internet Exploder. Increases page size, not just font size.