[LINK] [Oz-teachers] Advice for very large screens

[Tom Worthington]

stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> ... 'pages' to be read ... on large screen television sets ...

While teaching web design a few years ago it struck me that design for
small screens on mobile phones and very large screens for group display
were similar. This I suspect is a result of the limitations of human
vision and the size of hands and arms, not to do with the screen 
technology: <http://www.tomw.net.au/2009/wd/>.

You can try it for yourself: Stand in front of a large screen display at 
normal viewing distance. Hold up an iPhone and notice the two screens 
appear to be about the same size.

> It strikes me that presentations on *Interactive White Boards* call for
> much the same considerations as 'pages' on a 10' interactive television?

Yes, advances in web standards, such as HTML 5 and new versions of CSS, 
are making it much easier to build a web page which automatically
adjust to small and large screens.

If you design your web pages without clutter, with web standards and 
accessibility guidelines, they they will work on hand held devices and 
interactive white boards, as well as ordinary desktop screens.

> Here's Google's advice below for writing for ten foot screens ...
> 
> * The sizes of all the fonts and buttons are increased ...

You should not need to increase the size of the font, as this should be 
set to be large enough to be read at normal viewing distance for the 
device by default. Buttons can them be sized relative to the font.

But, for small and large group screens you need to take into account 
that they can hold less information. They way I think of it, the font 
stays the same size, but the screen gets smaller.

> * The "selected" item or item with the mouse over it is clearlyor lo
>   highlighted ...

Usually web appliance gadgets have a more visible indication of mouse
over and section than a normal web browser. Typically these devices will 
highlight text in links, rather than just underlining it.

> * The user can navigate intuitively around the page, using
>   up/down/left/right motions

Using Icons as push buttons can help. If these are made about 4 ems 
square (that is four times the size of the letter "m"), they are big 
enough to be pressed with a finger on a smart phone touch screen. On a 
screen with cursor control you can arrow between the buttons.

> * Additional padding has been added between all elements on the page

Padding can be proportional to the font, rather than a
fixed pixel size. Also it can be increased using CSS when a small or 
large screen is in use.

> Viewers sit relatively far from their screens. This distance makes a 
> traditional web page harder to read, cluttered...

A useful by-product of designs for large screens and smart screens might 
be less cluttered design generally.

ps: I discussed the issue of screen size to Mr Lyndon da Cruz, 
Moorfields Eye Hospital, London 
<http://www.thelondonproject.org/AboutUs/?id=370>.
He said he tells his patients that an iPhone screen close up is the size 
of a large screen TV across the room. He mentioned the issue of some 
Apps on the iPad which do not resize correctly.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra