A small CSS optimisation

[TerryE]

At the moment the core generated HTML document loads five styles: print.css, style.php?id=<style_no>&lang=<lang> and the three one-liners: normal.css, medium.css, large.css. Surely these last three are really just obsolete?

1. All modern browsers allow you to change the base font size by zooming the text. Most users who do this use the ctrl+scroll wheel or a touchpad gesture. Few even realise that you can select alternative page styles.
2. Some of the legacy browsers (e.g. MSIE6, IIRC) didn't even allow you access to non-default page styles.

I would agree that this would make more sense if the size CSS files were used for more than just specifying the base font size, but they aren't. So given that this feature is redundant, why not just drop the normal / medium / large CSS files and move the body {font-size: 10px;} into the style.php generated template?

Three less files to fetch if the CSS files aren't cached in the browser.

[naderman]

I think this makes sense, waiting for a patch

[DavidIQ]

I think this makes sense, waiting for a patch

+1

[bantu]

I think this makes sense, waiting for a patch

+1

+1

[TerryE]

This one isn't quite as simple as I suggested because of the current implementation of styleswitcher.js which is attached to the resize button at the right of the header crumb-trail bar. This currently uses a function setActiveStyleSheet(sheet) to cause the change and this uses the DOM to change the documents stylesheet.

I've had a look at a couple of examples of how other pages provide such zoom features without the stylesheet variants, and these either use the DOM to update the base style itself or walk the DOM to update the individual <p> et al tag font size attributes. There are functional subtleties here that need to be considered relating to scope and persistence. I've put looking into this on my todo list.

[hanakin]

the necessity for the button itself is not necessary and the complete removal of the styleswitcher has been proposed in the tracker and is already in the works via the jquery conversion.

[TerryE]

OK, let's kill this thread then and cover it as part of the jQuery and Prosilver optimisation discussions.