It's true the default text size is too small even with a low-resolution monitor, but I've been dealing with that for years just by selecting a suitable font size within each of the half-dozen or so programs in which I actually read a significant amount of text. I find that works fine.
Oh, god, no?! That font size is absolutely tiny and my display has a low logical resolution (1440×900 on a 15.4 inch screen, that’s pretty abysmal as logical resolutions go).
It should be double the size at least. Way too tiny.
The bare minimum usable font size feels to be about 20-24pt for me (judging off a virtual screen placed about the same distance I'd hold a laptop), so I think the only time people are even going to run into it is if they're doing something like zooming in/out an entire game UI at once.
I play a lot of older games, and have to lower my displsy resolution to get a usable font size in many of them (from native 4K down to 1920x1080 most of the time).
The advice is excessive and idealistic. But otherwise, I think the default screen resolutions render text too small. On my laptop, I prefer the scaled resolution of 1024x640, compared to the default 1280x800. Other settings I use is increasing display contrast and making use of display color filters (filter: color tint; intensity: max; color: red).
You probably have a high DPI monitor and need 150% display scaling from your OS. Devs usually have large monitors and will not notice the issue when they decide on font size.
Also 1 meter from the screen would be way too far for me personally.
I think the only reasonable approach applications can take is to layout everything in physical sizes, and to be largely unassuming about the display device (i.e. assume a standard (desktop monitor?) viewing distance). In consequence a sensible default font size would be something like 14pt, etc.
If the results aren't suitable (maybe a desktop monitor is viewed at a larger distance than a phone screen, maybe user is visually impaired, etc) then the OS can still offer to globally or locally configure the screen with a fake dpi.
Completely agree. The default font is too small for me to read it, so I set it at 150% and that's it. Everything works fine after this small customisation.
Don’t make me start emailing you every day to update the default font size from 12px to a modern default like 16px. This isn’t 2007 when everybody had 1024x768 monitors. I had to dust my monocle out of storage before adjusting my browser zoom level.
It's a personal preference, not a general direction.
I like small fonts. I like the before pictures better. I bought a 30" monitor so I can fit more content, more windows there, not to look at huge letters and whitespace.
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