[bradwestness]

12pt Times New Roman is the standard for publishing, so that's become the go-to size for a lot of websites. It was plenty big on 800x600 displays, but I agree that it's generally too small for today's resolutions.

However, the solution isn't to pick a new, slightly larger point size and just set everything to that, it's to use media queries to set an appropriate size for whatever medium the content is being displayed in, and to use sizes relative to the user's default rather than specifying exact point sizes.

You can also use absolute sizes (in and cm in CSS) so that the browser will display the font at the given size without regard to the display resolution or DPI.

Edit: Also, I highly recommend Readability, but obviously it'd be preferable if people just did the right thing to begin with.

[dredmorbius]

Readability is useful, though it's not painless to use on most websites.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: one of the pleasant surprises of seeing TBL's original WWW documentation posted to HN last year was how readable plain, unstyled HTML markup is. It's almost as if we have a need for two platforms: an unstyled user HTML reader for long-form works, and an HTML+Javascript applications platform for interactive sites and apps. I'm already using Firefox and Chrome somewhat in this way already.

[DanBC]

> one of the pleasant surprises of seeing TBL's original WWW documentation posted to HN last year was how readable plain, unstyled HTML markup is.

And readable on any computer, with any OS, with any browser, whether it's going to a screen or a printer or a speaker.

It is baffling why text heavy sites (where the product is the text) get display of text so wrong.

[pmb]

1pt is a unit of length. One point is 1/72 of an inch. It should be the same height now that it ever was, even on old monitors.

[gurkendoktor]

My 24" screen is probably further from my face than my 15" screen used to be (not least because the 15" screen almost completely covered my desk by itself).

[Too]

Not in CSS, 1pt is always x pixels regardless of how many DPI you have.

[steveax]

Nope, it's way more complicated than that. Device pixels, CSS pixels, a pixel is not a pixel. PPK on the subject:

http://fronteers.nl/congres/2012/sessions/a-pixel-is-not-a-p...

Points are a terrible unit for specifying font sizes for the screen. Use px or proportional units (em, percentages, etc.). Points are for print, not screen.

[bradwestness]

Yeah using pt works too. The problem is that everyone uses 12px in their CSS rather than 12pt.

[dchest]

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5268526