[alex3305]

> Afaik all browsers support font size increasing/decreasing even if you don't specify your sizes in em/rem.

Yes and no. On desktop you are right, however on mobile it is a whole different story. I'm visually impaired and I need font scaling in my OS and browser. That's why I can only use Chrome on Android and nothing else comes close on mobile.

In Chrome I can just set my preferred text size and most sites just adhere to this setting. Most of the time the only the odd element on a page glitches. Most of them are headings, which are often set in pixels. That's annoying, but no deal breaker.

Recently I tried switching to Firefox Mobile. In Firefox I can also set a preferred text size. But after some initial testing with my most visited sites, I came to the conclusion that Firefox Mobile is just poorly supported. Text sizes were all over the place. And it was unusable for me.

I also considered switching to iOS. But Safari doesn't even have a text scaling / sizing option. The only thing I could do on iOS is reader mode in Safari, but that's also site dependent. And I still have to pinch-zoom to set my text size every time I open a page.

And yes, I know I can pinch-zoom to enlarge all websites (except Google Amp!), but having to both horizontally and vertically scroll all text is extremely tiring.

[alwillis]

> I also considered switching to iOS. But Safari doesn't even have a text scaling / sizing option. The only thing I could do on iOS is reader mode in Safari, but that's also site dependent. And I still have to pinch-zoom to set my text size every time I open a page.

Apple basically invented the ability to dynamically resize browser text back in iOS 7 [1].

If you go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and set Larger Text to On, you make the text as large as you like.

If you only want bigger text in iOS Safari, the popup menu allows you to resize the text on the fly.

[1]: https://www.tpgi.com/text-resizing-web-pages-ios-using-dynam...

[alex3305]

> If you only want bigger text in iOS Safari, the popup menu allows you to resize the text on the fly.

Which also zooms in on the content, thus only letting me see part of the total width of the page. Which results in me having to both scroll horizontally and vertically.

[alwillis]

Which also zooms in on the content, thus only letting me see part of the total width of the page. Which results in me having to both scroll horizontally and vertically.

Depends on the site; if they coded it correctly and met accessibility guidelines [1], it would support text sizing of 200% or more. Given the state of CSS today, it’s not difficult to make the text wrap within the viewpoint even at bigger sizes so you wouldn’t have to scroll.

[1]: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/?showtechniques=144#r...

[alex3305]

> Depends on the site; if they coded it correctly and met accessibility guidelines, it would support text sizing of 200% or more.

I agree. But the cold, hard truth is that it just doesn't work.

[jamescostian]

In iOS, Settings->Display & Brightness->View can be changed to Zoomed. Does that help?

Android has its own mechanisms: https://www.wikihow.com/Change-the-Screen-Resolution-on-Your...

Put another way, would it help to decrease the DPI rather than only adjusting text?

[alex3305]

Thanks for this. I didn't know iOS had such an option. I've just tried this setting on my wife's iPhone and it enlarges text and elements quite significantly. However it still doesn't resolve my main issue with Safari.

On my Galaxy S21+ I use both a larger text size and zoomed in screen. Both are just basic sliders in the Display settings menu. Although not all apps or System UI elements adhere to these settings, unfortunately.

[projektfu]

iOS Safari does have a "Page zoom" setting that can be set per-site or as default in its settings, which is really mainly increasing the font size. It's probably not exactly as you like in Chrome.

[alex3305]

I have tried this setting multiple times, but it doesn't do what I expect it to. I just tried it again on my wife's iPhone 12. I set the default page zoom to 200% and opened one of my regular sites (tweakers.net (Dutch)). When opening an article the content is zoomed in. When I pinch-zoom out the text size is small again.

On Chrome (Android) whenever I set the font size to 200% the behavior is more or less the same as on desktop. So the content is zoomed in and text sizes are huge. On iOS Safari Reader Mode works the way I expect to, but I find this a bit of a faff to use.

[projektfu]

Ah, I see. Safari also shrinks the relative viewport. That's not as good.