ZOOM!

August 30, 2012 9:43 AM

What percentage of desktop web browsers are set to a zoom level of 100%?

Bonus points for knowing what they're likely zoomed to if it's not 100%.

(I'm asking because we're unsure how important it is to support zoom levels in a cumbersome legacy site that has various issues below and above 100%. We are going to start detecting zoom level using techniques like these in the meantime, but are trying to discover a ballpark figure more quickly and for future reference.)

posted by michaelh to computers & internet (4 answers total)

I would also be interested in knowing which browsers tend to have the users with alternate zoom levels. For example, if IE6 users are the bulk of the 75% zooms, that's less important since we don't fully support IE6 anyway.
posted by michaelh at 9:45 AM on August 30, 2012

Anecdotally, I use the built in OSX zoom and/or chrome's cmd + increase size thing on probably 90% of websites I visit because I keep my displays at 1080p. I have significantly better than 20/20 vision (lazer surgery).
posted by cmoj at 11:26 AM on August 30, 2012

I use this feature all the damn time, it's one of the best tricks out there. I've shown it to at least a half a dozen other people though, not one of whom had ever seen it before. So I think only a smallish minority at most are using browser zoom.
posted by Scientist at 11:47 AM on August 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

Scientist, when you present it as a superior way to browse it makes me think we should go out of our way to support it.

I still can't find any statistics; I suppose we will have to be the first to compile them.
posted by michaelh at 1:15 PM on September 1, 2012