Effra-Light font used on forum is very difficult to read

[SadScribbler]

Greetings!

Sorry to bring this up and possibly it is posted in the wrong section but I have been unable to locate a contact link for the web administrator.

Sadly the forum seems to be following the general "We'd rather use a soft trendy grey font than really care about those with less than 100% eyesight" website trend.

Having been a devoted Windows Scrivener user for some years I have been impatiently looking forward to V3 and just stumbled across the Beta page. http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40621

The problem is however hard I try, because of the strain on the eyes I just cannot be bothered to struggle to read the expansive warnings, guidance and notes.

Now the whole purpose of writing is to communicate and that includes a careful selection of the style, size and quality of font used. Whilst Effra-Light is quite delightful in short clips, such as an advertising brochure, it really is a serious no-no for me when struggling to absorb the information the Writer is attempting to get across.

What can be done to select a decent font that looks black and does the job of communication ?

Perhaps I am alone in this view........

[Argoed]

No, you're not alone. It is an awful font to read.

[AmberV]

Sadly the forum seems to be following the general “We’d rather use a soft trendy grey font than really care about those with less than 100% eyesight” website trend.

Something I wish mainstream browser developers would greater emphasise is that how the Web is viewed can be modified at will. I suppose a common but inflexible take on that capability can be argued for “reader” modes—you can control everything about a page, the reader mode just uses that ability to do one very specific thing as a feature. Vivaldi goes a bit further with a bunch of accessibility options that can override the page view in real time.

Thankfully there are plug-ins that can help. While Stylus can get a bit technical if you poke under the hood, its easy mode is pretty simple. For example you click on the toolbar icon while viewing this forum, let it search for themes, and you’ll find a Bolder Sans theme I created. Install that, and now you won’t have to worry about the font choice.

[lunk]

Thankfully there are plug-ins that can help.

:.. but we shouldn’t have to bother with plug-ins to be able to read web pages. What’s the point of making web pages with text that is hard to read?

[Major Major]

Thankfully there are plug-ins that can help.

:.. but we shouldn’t have to bother with plug-ins to be able to read web pages. What’s the point of making web pages with text that is hard to read?

Agreed!

[SadScribbler]

It is indeed a strange irony that the forum supporting the use of a software package devoted to promote clear and concise communication through the written word fails to share the same ethos!

I hope the persons who are in a position to reconsider the choice of font, agree to make the change in the forum's CSS file, which should take less than one minute.

[devinganger]

Y'all,

If this was an easy problem to solve -- e.g. everyone agreed what settings of font, color, and size constituted "readable" and "clear" -- L&L would have already done it.

As our experience as users of Scrivener teaches us, we have no such consensus. People set the most amazing combinations as their editor defaults and in fact get upset when they can't set every inch of the UI the way they want.

But for web sites?

Please be consistent. Ioa already told you how to fix the problem.

[SadScribbler]

Please be consistent. Ioa already told you how to fix the problem.

I am sorry but that is a nonsense. This is nothing to do with tuning one's browser. Why should the User make special arrangements because a single website cannot comply with normality and insists on presenting its information in a precious manner?

I am also a web developer and very cognisant that pages must be easy to read quickly otherwise the Visitor will just leap off elsewhere. Those fortunately diminishing oh-so-clever Websites using pale grey fonts with hard-to-read pages barely get read. For that reason standard fonts are always "accepted and expected" - Arial, Times Roman, etc

If anyone wants a plug-in to use a non-standard font of their choice, that is fine but one doesn't legislate for the minority and force the majority to make change.

Furthermore, why should I introduce a plug-in which will skew all displayed fonts on every visited website to a single style, when most variations are perfectly fine to view?

As I said before, this font is absolutely fine in small doses on some materials, but it certainly wouldn't work for most publishing applications. In fact it is recommended for Headlines major and minor and I quote "It is not strictly a font intended for setting body copy" .

I think my point has been missed - writing is about communicating and the method of delivery is a vital component , be it printed on paper or displayed on a screen.

Hopefully a staff member down in Cornwall will pick up on this or perhaps I will contact them directly.

[AmberV]

Furthermore, why should I introduce a plug-in which will skew all displayed fonts on every visited website to a single style, when most variations are perfectly fine to view?

The plug-in I referred to does nothing except what you tell it to. If you visit a site you can click on the icon and install themes that others have created for it and registered on the site (or create your own), but if you do not install any themes for the site then it will be untouched. It’s not a simple font adjustment tool either, all it really does is apply a custom stylesheet to the page after it has loaded—with that the font could be changed, but so also can the colours, and even the entire design to some degree. As a web developer you should feel right at home with it. With my humble CSS skills I can usually fix up any site I come across that has elements of design I don’t care for.

Your point hasn’t been missed, and it’s not the first time it has been made either. We had a long thread about it back when the site update was rolled out, and it was mentioned that we would take a look at alternatives the next time we had the web developers work on it. That isn't a promise that anything will change, but that's the last I heard about it.