Default Font Size

The most glaring error in Web Design is Font Sizing. The viewers default font sizes can be changed, and for good reason. People who have vision issues often change the default font size in their browser or on their operating system so that they can read the text. But many, if not most, web designers do not take this into account, leaving the person viewing their websites with a broken and barely usable experience. Or, even worse, they set them in pixel sizes, which don't allow fonts to be rescaled in IE, forcing those with vision problems to squint at text that is too small for them to read. Even web designers who should know better make this mistake. And this is not solely an "amateur" mistake. Websites of recognizable brand names are broken in this way. This website makes a further mistake in not being cross browser compatible, and only looking acceptable in Internet Explorer. But regardless of which browser you use, if you kick the font size up even ONE notch, the website either breaks badly (everything but Internet Explorer) OR the fonts don't scale (Internet Explorer).

The majority of well designed websites adjusts gracefully in all browsers to different default font sizes, to various resolution and window sizes, and will set both background colors and font colors to assure good contrast and easy viewing for everyone, no matter what choices they've made in their default environment.