IE 8 still does not resize text sized in pixels

As most accessibility and usability aware web professionals know, Internet Explorer does not by default allow the user to increase the size of text whose size has been specified in CSS pixels.

Some believe that is in fact the correct behaviour, while others (me included) think IE should do what all other browsers do – give the end user complete control over text size without having to change obscure browser settings.

Almost two years ago I posted IE 7 does not resize text sized in pixels. I was hoping that IE 8 would change that, but apparently not – not even in “super standards mode”.

Yes, there is full page zoom (which works much better in IE 8 than in IE 7), but the controls for resizing text only are still there, and they still do not work when pixels or an absolute unit has been used.

Text resizing that only works on some websites has to be very confusing for end users, so I really don’t understand why Microsoft doesn’t either remove the text resize functionality completely or make it work regardless of which unit has been used to specify text size.

Posted on February 23, 2009 in Accessibility, Browsers, Usability

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