Launchpad font is far too small

[mycae]

The new font size is far too small. I cannot read it, and I have reasonably good eyesight. I have had to disable CSS on launchpad entirely, as answering questions in this forum is now an exercise in squinting, or cutting and pasting into a text editor.

[Jonathan Lange (jml)]

Could you please attach a screenshot, tell us which browser & version you're using, and also your font settings for the browser?

If you can say which font is being rendered, that would also help a lot.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

@mycae
Use the zoom feature to increase the fonts. The changes made to the CSS makes zoom reliable.

[mycae (mycae)]

http://imagepaste.nullnetwork.net/viewimage.php?id=1865

Zooming seems silly -- the headings are the correct size at the default zoom level

[mycae (mycae)]

Oh, I am now not at the machine that I originally posted this on, but the other machine was running Firefox (not sure which version) and the current machine I am using is running Firefox 3.5 and has the same problem

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

Zoom is not really silly. Web sites cannot know everything at play: device/OS/font render/font selection/browser/browser hacks/display scaling. Browsers have zoom to let the user make the decision.

Lp's font size is now the same as one.ubuntu.com, and ubuntu.com, ubuntuforums.org. omgubuntu.co.uk is one pixel larger and askubuntu.com is 2 pixels larger.

[Ubfan (ubfan1)]

The user has control of the minimum font size -- anything smaller is made larger, anything larger is untouched.
Edit/Preferences/ Content tab, on the Fonts line, click the Advanced button, on that screen, set the minimum font size you want instead of the default of "none".

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

Launchpad's font seems a lot lighter than ubuntu.com's, even if they
are nominally the same size. I too find it considerably harder to
read, and I've heard other users comment on this as well. I think
we're not done yet.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

The font colours are identical. We have specified Ubuntu regular because the beta font testers were seeing Ubuntu light. We think the light font was too light given that the average font-size decreased.

There is no claim we are done. We have lots of text and colour changes to make over the next few months...we are onyl 3 week in with 2 landing.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

Ubfan, Chromium (at least) doesn't provide a minimum-font-size limit, and if a user is happy with their fonts generally but Launchpad looks too small, that's prima facie a bug in Launchpad.

I suspect this is actually a dupe of <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/+bug/727733> which basically says it's a bug that the R21 Ubuntu Beta Monospace font is so much smaller than the Ubuntu proportional font even at the same nominal size. I hope that bug will be fixed by reverting the shrinking of the monospace font. See eg my screenshot <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-font-family/+bug/727733/+attachment/1881786/+files/launchpad.png>

To know whether that's actually the problem here we need to know what fonts mycae is using.

[mycae (mycae)]

And how do I know that? I assume that there could be some automatic substitution going on, but I don't know who, or what makes that decision (firefox, gnome, X's font server?) or how to query it.

In the mean time, ubuntu.com looks fine, but launchpad does not (screenshot for comparison http://imagepaste.nullnetwork.net/viewimage.php?id=1867) Note the black line across the top, which touches the top of the letters in the ubuntu.com page, but does not for the launchpad.net pages.

The font to mes just looks black...

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

If you're using Firefox, there are font settings in the Preferences dialog.

If you haven't specifically opted in to the Ubuntu Monospace beta
programme, I don't think you will have it, which falsifies the idea
this is due to that font recently changing size.

Martin

[mycae (mycae)]

I'm not up on the latest and greatest in web-font selection, ist true, but the change occured at the same time on two machines on compeltely different networks, all with automatic updates *disabled*, and a virtual machine as well; so it certainly is not a client-side thing

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

Ok, but can you still tell us which fonts you are using?

Martin

[mycae (mycae)]

Dumb question -- how do I find that out -- the font is specified by the web page, and matched to my font database by my browser, no?

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

It is not a dumb question. It is often asked and very hard to answer. You need to compare the order of precedence of the requested fonts against those that are provided by your browser via the OS/font render. This can be difficult because you need to know what tools can display fonts and know how to read their names when comparing them to the fonts requested. Lp uses two font-families for normal (roman) and monospaced text:
    normal: 'UbuntuBeta Regular', Ubuntu, 'Bitstream Vera Sans', 'DejaVu Sans', Tahoma, sans-serif;
    monospaced: 'UbuntuBeta Mono', 'Ubuntu Mono', monospace;
^ The rule is favour the testing ubuntu font, the stable ubuntu font,
  older sans-serif fonts used by free systems, older fonts used on proprietary systems.

If you are testing Ubuntu fonts, you are seeing UbuntuBeta (that change often). If you are running Ubuntu 10.10, you are seeing Ubuntu, Older Ubuntu an free systems will probably match DejaVu Sans. Windows and MacOS will choose Tahoma.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

Oh sorry, I did not really answer your question. If you are running Ubuntu or GNOME, you can use "Character Map" from the accessories menu to list and compare fonts.

[mycae (mycae)]

OK, I think I can answer now..

For my main machine (opensuse) I do have Dejavu Sans installed, and not bitstream vera sans (bistream charter, yes, bitstream terminal, yes). I do not have UBuntuBeta or Ubuntu

In my ubuntu 10.04 VM, the fonts are the right size; my debian and openSuse boxes, no (Screenshot:http://imagepaste.nullnetwork.net/viewimage.php?id=1871 ). The opensuse box is the host, the ubuntu is the guest.