[Sigia-l] Fitts' Law gone crazy? <OT>

[Samantha Bailey]

I sent this to a friend whose mother has macular degeneration and
typically uses the computer with her face about an inch from the
screen--it seems like there could be a valuable application for this
with people in her situation. I know there are adaptive technologies
that do something of the same thing in terms of radically increasing
the size of text, but they're also very expensive.

sb

On 3/17/06, Lyle Kantrovich <lyle.kantrovich at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd agree with Davezilla that the font size is overkill for most
> folks, and ends up being a poor use of space.  Note also just how big
> your browser window needs to be when on the home page to get the
> search box to be above the fold...then notice all the wasted
> whitespace in the top left.  Not what I'd call good layout.
>
> The ability to click on a search result's "bounding box" is
> interesting, and their use of tab ordering is quite good.
>
> Given that the site has pretty much *no* explanation of it's purpose
> or target audience...it's hard to say what they are trying to
> accomplish.
>
> A little "view source" snooping hints that they are targeting a "low
> vision" audience, which isn't surprising:
>
> <meta name="description" content="Big.com - The search engine with the
> most readable results on the Web.">
> <meta name="keywords" content="search, search engine, big, big.com,
> web search, low vision, limited vision, large type, readable">
>
> I do find it humorous that the somehow found a way (using a table
> layout) to consume over 3.5Kb of html code (yes, it's a small file
> size anyways) for a page that has nearly NO content on it.  A good CSS
> layout would be more efficient.
>
> Lyle
>
> On 3/17/06, Davezilla <davezilla at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/17/06, Listera <listera at rcn.com> wrote:
> > > Or on to something big with the aging baby boomers? USA Today of search? Out
> > > Googling the Google UI?
> >
> > I'm a big fan of sites with large type on their forms (like Flickr,
> > Panic Software, 37 Signals, WordPress, etc.) but I found the results
> > were so large (even at the smallest of the Big sizes), that the amount
> > of scrolling was ridiculous. I suppose if I had severe visual
> > impairments, this would be a blessing. The contrast and fonts couldn't
> > be easier to read.
> >
> > --
> > Color me gone,
> > Davezilla
> > http://davezilla.com/
> >
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Samantha Bailey | samantha at baileysorts.com | http://baileysorts.com