User>Driven highlighted by Squarespace

I use a service called Squarespace to host User>Driven. It's reasonably priced and the interface is highly customizable. I can organize the blog, forums and other content however I like. They take care of the RSS feed and even provide basic traffic stats.

Squarespace recently added User>Driven to its "best of" example sites under Design, citing its use of "brown space" instead of white space in the layout.

Incidentally, one reader suggested the font might be too small on the site. Any feedback on that or other design or layout issues from others? 

Links:

http://www.squarespace.com

http://examples.squarespace.com/display/ShowJournal?moduleId=975583&categoryId=86338 

Comments

[Bary Coleman]

Yeah, I must agree that the font is a little small. Hi-res displays make everything smaller as the DPI increases. There are 2 ways you can go with this:

1. Make the font bigger.
2. Make the font size a user selection

In the case of #1 you are making the site consistently larger for all users. While this might appeal to some it is not necessarily going to appeal to all.

In the case of #2 you can provide 3 font sizes (small, medium and large). You select the smallest font by default and let users enlarge the font as required. It is a good idea to have the setting persisted in a cookie so I don't have to reset it every time I come back.

One of the issues with enlarging the fonts is that you'll alo need to enlarge the viewable area. With a hi-res display I have tons of horizontal real estate that the site isn't using. If you could make the CSS for larger fonts also make the visible width greater that would be a bonus.

[Bruce McCarthy]

Being User>Driven is about responding to user input. And it's about doing so rapidly and as simply as possible. Rapid iteration allows for course corrections along the way so you quickly arrive at something optimal.

So, let's try to the simple solution first. I've upped the font (Tahoma) size from 8 to 9 pt. I guess 8 *was* a bit small to start with.

Feedback?