# Font change?



## Gerry Seymour

Recently, I noticed the body font of posts is difficult for me to read - I now suddenly need the page much bigger (maybe 120%) to comfortably read the text. Did MT/Xenforo have an update in the last couple of weeks that affected this?


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## Headhunter

Looks no different to me


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## Dirty Dog

No change that I am aware of.

Presbyopia?


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## jobo

gpseymour said:


> Recently, I noticed the body font of posts is difficult for me to read - I now suddenly need the page much bigger (maybe 120%) to comfortably read the text. Did MT/Xenforo have an update in the last couple of weeks that affected this?


What are you using to access the site, if it's tablet etc, then check if you have it on desktop or mobile, being on mobile refuses the image quality quite a bit


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## Gerry Seymour

jobo said:


> What are you using to access the site, if it's tablet etc, then check if you have it on desktop or mobile, being on mobile refuses the image quality quite a bit


Chrome on Win10 desktop. It might be a change in Chrome.


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## Gerry Seymour

Dirty Dog said:


> No change that I am aware of.
> 
> Presbyopia?


There’s definitely some of that, but this change only appears to affect MT pages. It seems to coincide with the latest Win10 update, and I’m wondering if the new “fix apps that are blurry” setting is somehow involved. Or if Chrome changed something to leverage some deep setting in the new release.


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## pdg

I noticed a bit of a difference in the text a short while back (chrome on Android, 1080x1960) - it got 'finer', like slimmer lines and sharper.

I found it an improvement...


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## pdg

jobo said:


> What are you using to access the site, if it's tablet etc, then check if you have it on desktop or mobile, being on mobile refuses the image quality quite a bit



That depends on the resolution of your device screen - low res screens = low quality images.

The text and images on my moto g4 are far superior to what my tab3 can manage.


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## Gerry Seymour

pdg said:


> I noticed a bit of a difference in the text a short while back (chrome on Android, 1080x1960) - it got 'finer', like slimmer lines and sharper.
> 
> I found it an improvement...


That's what I'm seeing - it actually looks like a better font. But even on my 1920 x 1080 screens (one is 24" and one is 13.3"), it seems hard to read. When I move close to the screen, I can see that it's clearly anti-aliased on about half the strokes, making it lower contrast.


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## jobo

pdg said:


> That depends on the resolution of your device screen - low res screens = low quality images.
> 
> The text and images on my moto g4 are far superior to what my tab3 can manage.


well yes, but that's not what I'm talking about, I'm refering to the fact that browsers, give you the option to request " desktop" full resolution or " mobile" reduced resolution that loads faster on slow processors and reduces your data usage  some what.it doesn't matter hplow good the resolution of your screen is, if the,site is sending you( at your request) low resolution info


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## pdg

jobo said:


> well yes, but that's not what I'm talking about, I'm refering to the fact that browsers, give you the option to request " desktop" full resolution or " mobile" reduced resolution that loads faster on slow processors and reduces your data usage  some what.it doesn't matter hplow good the resolution of your screen is, if the,site is sending you( at your request) low resolution info



Mobile sites haven't overly reduced resolution or content quality since I was wapping on this:




These days it's about layout (optimisation for portrait display), font size and touch screen compatibility (things like menu format).

Requesting the desktop site doesn't change the quality for me at all.

Mobile page versions no longer assume or deliver low res unless that's how the browser interprets or requests it - the 5.5" screen on my phone has a marginally higher res than @gpseymour has on his 22" monitor...




Edit: I misread my screen res earlier - it's actually 1920, not 1960...


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## pdg

gpseymour said:


> That's what I'm seeing - it actually looks like a better font. But even on my 1920 x 1080 screens (one is 24" and one is 13.3"), it seems hard to read. When I move close to the screen, I can see that it's clearly anti-aliased on about half the strokes, making it lower contrast.



I'm intrigued enough to have a proper look on a desktop soonish (I rarely use an actual computer these days...)


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## jobo

pdg said:


> Mobile sites haven't overly reduced resolution or content quality since I was wapping on this:
> 
> View attachment 21482
> 
> These days it's about layout (optimisation for portrait display), font size and touch screen compatibility (things like menu format).
> 
> Requesting the desktop site doesn't change the quality for me at all.
> 
> Mobile page versions no longer assume or deliver low res unless that's how the browser interprets or requests it - the 5.5" screen on my phone has a marginally higher res than @gpseymour has on his 22" monitor...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Edit: I misread my screen res earlier - it's actually 1920, not 1960...


I didn't say they Overly reduced resolution, I said they reduced resolution, this is a fact of you've noticed it or not


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## Gerry Seymour

jobo said:


> well yes, but that's not what I'm talking about, I'm refering to the fact that browsers, give you the option to request " desktop" full resolution or " mobile" reduced resolution that loads faster on slow processors and reduces your data usage  some what.it doesn't matter hplow good the resolution of your screen is, if the,site is sending you( at your request) low resolution info


That might be true for images, but not typically for  fonts. The fonts are rendered at the client side.


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## pdg

jobo said:


> I didn't say they Overly reduced resolution, I said they reduced resolution, this is a fact of you've noticed it or not



Every modern browser has the facility to scale images to display conveniently on screen, if I insert a full image in a post here it will scale to fit the window irrespective of the device I use (because I like to set scaling).

Click on the image (or open in new tab) and it's full res.

None of that is mobile specific, nor is reduction for bandwidth purposes.


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## pdg

gpseymour said:


> That might be true for images, but not typically for  fonts. The fonts are rendered at the client side.



It's very rarely true for images these days either - a decade+ ago it was common to have a copy set of reduced res images for the "mobile site" but most don't bother these days.

When you were charged over £10 per MB in the opening days of gprs (or per minute on dial up mobile data) it made a huge difference, but those days are gone.


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## jobo

pdg said:


> It's very rarely true for images these days either - a decade+ ago it was common to have a copy set of reduced res images for the "mobile site" but most don't bother these days.
> 
> When you were charged over £10 per MB in the opening days of gprs (or per minute on dial up mobile data) it made a huge difference, but those days are gone.


Here's an introduction to the bb c mobile site, it's says, it's less data intensive to make it faster and less expensive on mobile devices.
BBC Mobile | FAQ | BBC Mobile: Standard version


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## jobo

Edit,


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## Gerry Seymour

jobo said:


> Here's an introduction to the bb c mobile site, it's says, it's less data intensive to make it faster and less expensive on mobile devices.
> BBC Mobile | FAQ | BBC Mobile: Standard version


It's possible that's true, but probably not by much on most sites. My (definitely non-scientific) experience is that they load about the same. My home internet access for my laptop is the same cellular signal as my phone uses, and I see about the same loading speed on both. Most CMS (like WordPress) generate the mobile sites on the fly when using a "responsive" theme. They're serving scaled images the same way on both desktop and mobile. It's possible there's a small difference in image resolution, but not by much. The current mobile screens are universally very pixel-dense compared to most laptop screens. My oldish iPhone 6s carries the same resolution (1920 × 1080) in a 4.7" screen as my (slightly newer) laptop does in 13.3" and my (much older) 24" monitor. Since the iPhone's screen is so much smaller, it could be served a slightly smaller (in pixel count) image than the others, but if it was significantly smaller, it would be noticed against the very pixel-dense surroundings. It's part of the challenge in managing data now. When mobile sites first became ubiquitous, we were running 3G, so data throughput was as much a limiting factor as screen layout. That's not true any longer, so most mobile sites simply don't bother to do much about limiting how much data they use. The BBC site may actually be doing a better job of that, or that might be a statement left over from when data speed mattered more.


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## jobo

gpseymour said:


> It's possible that's true, but probably not by much on most sites. My (definitely non-scientific) experience is that they load about the same. My home internet access for my laptop is the same cellular signal as my phone uses, and I see about the same loading speed on both. Most CMS (like WordPress) generate the mobile sites on the fly when using a "responsive" theme. They're serving scaled images the same way on both desktop and mobile. It's possible there's a small difference in image resolution, but not by much. The current mobile screens are universally very pixel-dense compared to most laptop screens. My oldish iPhone 6s carries the same resolution (1920 × 1080) in a 4.7" screen as my (slightly newer) laptop does in 13.3" and my (much older) 24" monitor. Since the iPhone's screen is so much smaller, it could be served a slightly smaller (in pixel count) image than the others, but if it was significantly smaller, it would be noticed against the very pixel-dense surroundings. It's part of the challenge in managing data now. When mobile sites first became ubiquitous, we were running 3G, so data throughput was as much a limiting factor as screen layout. That's not true any longer, so most mobile sites simply don't bother to do much about limiting how much data they use. The BBC site may actually be doing a better job of that, or that might be a statement left over from when data speed mattered more.


Well yes, it's not necessary on top end devices with fast unfettered board band, that's why you can turn it off, but that's not all oR even most of the population .

Data is also suppressed by a number of the popular mobile browsers, chrome for instance will turn down the quality of the data to save you money on sites that don't provided the service,( or further savings on those that do) to increase speed and cut costs. I use puffin browsers, as in on a metered connection, it's saved me about 50% of my costs at the expense of quality,And makes my NOT toP end device extremely fast

The resolution o the screen is a popular misconce p tion, it's just a physical fact that it has  X, pixels per inch, the quality it gives Is dependent at the quality of the data being sent, I Stream films in 360, it doesn't matter if I have a high def, screen I'm only getting a quality of 360


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## Gerry Seymour

jobo said:


> Well yes, it's not necessary on top end devices with fast unfettered board band, that's why you can turn it off, but that's not all oR even most of the population .
> 
> Data is also suppressed by a number of the popular mobile browsers, chrome for instance will turn down the quality of the data to save you money on sites that don't provided the service,( or further savings on those that do) to increase speed and cut costs. I use puffin browsers, as in on a metered connection, it's saved me about 50% of my costs at the expense of quality,
> 
> The resolution o the screen is a popular misconce p tion, it's just a physical fact that it has  X, pixels per inch, the quality it gives Is dependent at the quality of the data being sent, I Stream films in 360, it doesn't matter if I have a high def, screen I'm only getting a quality of 360


I do the same on my PC, for much the same reason. And, yes, you can choose lower resolution/data rate - most sites don't do much of that for you, anymore.


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