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The font used on the new look for MSE is so small compared to the one used on MSO that it almost seems an error:

screen shot of mse-vs-mso

Was this miniaturization accidental, or did you actually intend to make us squint at MSE now? 👓

Also, because the pale blue provides far less contrast than the dark grey, it becomes even harder to read at small font sizes, raising serious issues of accessibility.

My guess is that this is just a temporary place-holder, and that something more readable will appear by and by. Is it?

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  • 3
    Why so big a font for MSO? Did you change the zoom on MSO but forgot to do the same on MSE?
    – Antony
    Commented Apr 18, 2014 at 0:17
  • This seems to be the opposite of the buttons. And the font size for adding comments is larger than normal as well.
    – gunr2171
    Commented Apr 18, 2014 at 0:29
  • FYI: Display density on meta: how about a compact view?
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Apr 18, 2014 at 0:35
  • 1
    Your MSO layout looks way off from what it's supposed to be. Looks like you're zoomed in there.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Apr 18, 2014 at 1:23
  • @AnnaLear I thought so too, but I really haven’t. However, I have discovered that this is some sort of issue with Safari, because in Opera they both look much more comparable.
    – tchrist
    Commented Apr 18, 2014 at 1:27
  • I'm not seeing a change from what I expected in Firefox.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Apr 18, 2014 at 2:56

1 Answer 1

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It's not teeny-tiny. The font size is actually only 1px smaller here than it was on the old meta site. The big difference you're seeing is that the title is no longer bold, which removes a lot of weight from the text that didn't need to be there. This is very much intentional. Quite a while ago, they made a change to Stack Overflow to remove the bold from the numbers. The bottom line: when everything is bolded as important, then nothing is important.

The text of the title does not need to be bolded, and on quite a lot of Stack Exchange sites in the network it isn't. The colors and font weight of these links are actually the exact same values that are used for the beta theme currently utilized on over 70 different beta sites on the network.

Sure, it might be something to get used to, just like the change in font weight of the post score numbers was something to get used to, but eventually you will get used to it.

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  • I'll note that personally I didn't even notice the difference, because for a long time I've been using custom CSS to remove that ugly font-weight: bold from question titles on SO and MSO. It's just plain unpleasant to look at.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Apr 18, 2014 at 0:32

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