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> I think that, in general, users have settings in their browsers
> that are okay with them. Even if those settings are just the default
> settings and they don't know how to change their settings, they are
> satisfied with their settings. If they had some weird settings that
> they didn't like, they would have figured out how to change them. So,
> they don't really need their settings set. They have okay settings.
So, since they don't care or are happy with whatever they get, they
probably won't mind if I set a font I think would be most appropriate.
It probably won't hurt their ability to read the text. They probably
won't thank me, but I doubt they'll be upset.
>
> Now, if you set things for them, many of them will not notice or
> care and will be perfectly satisfied with your settings as well. But
> some of them did deliberately set things and will be very annoyed at
> having to take extra steps to override your settings. Therefore, it
> seems to me that you risk alienating some users when you really don't
> need to. It seems it would be better to design your page so that it
> is readable at any reasonable settings.
Wouldn't those likely to be annoyed already have their browsers set so
that they'll ignore any fonts, style, or even colors set by web pages?
It seems to me that if it matters to you, you'll turn off (if you can)
any page's styles or fonts in favor of your preferences. So again, you
won't notice that I've done anything.
So I'm alienating those few (I suspect, maybe I'm wrong) who, noticing
that a page is not using the font or size they've specified, manually
disable the page's fonts and/or styles and then reenable those settings
after reading my page. Now that sounds like a lot of work.
I suppose that either way I go I'll alienate someone. Perhaps I'll just
try to keep the numbers low. <g>
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