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I've gotten into the habit of modifying the CSS of web sites I frequent to improve the readability and usability in general. I do this using a plugin for the web browser. For instance, this is how the HN home page looks like: http://i.imgur.com/WaTQq.jpg

This is the most perfect design because it's tailored to my needs.

Here's how YouTube looks like: http://i.imgur.com/eZAsx.jpg

Reddit: http://i.imgur.com/rnaxb.jpg



I'm a big fan of userContent.css myself.

One of the big disappointments I've had with Chrome so far is that there's no way to set default font sizes (within the browser UI itself). I suspect there may be configuration settings .... hrm .... no "about:config", damn.

I'll try the userContent.css trick next. I've long forced all sites to use both my preferred fonts and sizes. Most comply reasonably well, though some (overly specified) designs break.

And that's for a guy who's been surfing in his 20s-40s, with good vision, though I'm just starting to feel the need for reading glasses. My parents are in their late 70s, Dad's got glaucoma. I've had to push up the contrast and zoom settings in his Mac account, for which he's grateful (the Web is one of his primary outlets / connections to the world now).

Sites designed on large, high-contrast Mac monitors, viewed on smaller, lower contrast devices, suffer the most. HN definitely could use a contrast improvement (I'm viewing zoomed up a couple of clicks right now, couldn't say just how much).

The real key isn't just sizing fonts (and setting contrast) appropriately, but to design pages which resize and rescale gracefully. I can live with the first if the second also occurs. Far too often it doesn't.


YouTube is very clean. I don't suppose you would share your CSS? If not, I'll do it myself...but it's always nice not to re-invent the wheel.


It would be my pleasure: https://gist.github.com/1106842

This CSS fix for YouTube removes a lot of functionality like the search form but since I can search youtube using extensions and the browser address field this isn't a huge issue.


Thank you. I agree re: the search bar; not such a big deal. YouTube will be much nicer now.


Seems like you might just have poor eyesight. Why not simply Ctrl-scrollwheel the text larger instead of going through the trouble to alter the CSS?


There's nothing wrong with my eye sight. I don't mind wasting some vertical space to get better readability. Modifying the css is very easy and doesn't take much time.




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