I remember seeing a website that had <html style="font-size: XXX%"> for the top-level element, and had JS that would dynamically recalculate that percentage on every resize event to keep the visual font size almost (exactly) constant. Made me think for a moment that my mouse wheel broke.
replyOne of my pet peeves in the modern web is when someone displays an image and scales it to exactly the size of your screen, but I want to look more closely at a part of the image so I do a scrollwheel zoom, only for the image to actually shrink as every UI element except the thing I want gets bigger. And then you go "ok, right click on the image and do the "Open Image in new tab" thing and somehow the site defeats that and puts all of their UI crap in the new tab as well.
replyThe modern version is to use @media to achieve the same annoying effect without js. Fortunately, there's a finite number of rules so I've found that if you zoom far enough the text does actually start getting larger. Though I expect that someone's already figured out how to use CSS Math to keep text tiny at all zoom levels.
reply>The modern version is to use @media to achieve the same annoying effect without js.
replyI think that is the up until about 2020 way, the modern way is using clamp to do it
https://css-tricks.com/linearly-scale-font-size-with-css-cla...
> I’d say perhaps once per day I’ll encounter a website that has never had zoom in/out (ctl +/-) tested because if you zoom up even one level from 100%, everything breaks
replyJust tested, hn breaks if you zoom >110%.
How does it break for you? Seems OK to me on android — in fact, I already had it at 110%. Reminded me to check my desktop settings which have HN fixed at 125%. I cannot believe that, in 2026, the default font size is set at 12px — is anyone actually reading it at that size?!
reply> I cannot believe that, in 2026, the default font size is set at 12px — is anyone actually reading it at that size?!
replyThe very first "quality of life" thing I do when I install a new computer / operating system nowadays is double (sometimes triple) the default font size. 12pt was probably fine when our monitors were 640x480, and when we were 18 years old.
Yeah, 12px is fine (27" 1440p, no display scaling). It is on the small side. I'd go a bit larger for something I made. But it's not a small enough to slow down my reading.
replyFor some reason I though the GP was talking about browsing on mobile, where I have the issue:
replyThe same issue happens on desktop but it requires zooming a bit more than 110%, and is screen-size dependent.
replyI leave HN on default everything, but I have a 1080p monitor so it might look bigger for me than someone with a higher resolution monitor... I don't know how that works. But I often have to zoom out of websites linked here because the text is so big and it feels uncomfortable to read
replyWhich platform is this on? I usually read hn on a desktop browser, and it works fine well above 110% there.
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I use DuckDuckGo Browser, Firefox, and Chrome on Android pretty much in that order of preference. In both mobile mode and desktop mode all of these browsers support pinch zoom and two-finger drag scrolling. I have no problems with this site using those.
replyI think we might need a little more information than just the OS to differentiate.
I browse everything at 125% and HN is fine on my machine so I decided to check. It depends on your width.
reply1080px wide (aka on my vertical monitor) HN comments stop reflowing > 300%
At 1920px wide it never stops reflowing.
For some reason I though the GP was talking about browsing on mobile, where I have the issue:
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