Hard to read

I recently started getting Digest emails again :slightly_smiling_face:. The good news is that I am now able to see the photos in the email. The less good news is that I find the format very difficult to read since it is a non serif font with minimal space between the lines and a light gray text on a white background :disappointed:. Would very much appreciate black text. Thanks.

This is good feedback. I’ll see what we can do about this. Pretty sure we can format that better. Thanks @janetb!

1 Like

I second that; the new font being used in the Summary you send out by email is pretty illegible - tiny and gray. Larger and black would be great; it shouldn’t require a microscope to read this stuff…

Hi all. Today I worked on the formatting for the emails and you should see these changes in the Friday Aug 30 email. I made the text black and bumped the font size up.

Let me know how it looks to you. I think it might take a few rounds before we get it just right.

A lot of websites use very light, sans serif text on a white background. That seems to be some designers’ fad ‘style’ these days, and who cares about readability?

Many browsers have the setting option of “allow website to set its own fonts” or words to that effect, which you can deny. And some that do not state that option do let you define a minimum font size, and define a replacement font for ‘sans serif’, which you could make serif, bold.

Somewhere in your browser you will see ‘options’, ‘settings’, or a similar word. Look for ‘appearance’ under that, or ‘fonts’…

I use several browsers, each for specific purposes. The best one for denying websites the ability to set their own fonts is an old Mozilla (pre-FireFox) version called Seamonkey. I guess that title sounded cool to some juvenile programmers, there have been worse names. (Kentucky Fired Computers started to be profitable enough that they went for respectability, renaming to Northstar Computers.) Anyway, Seamonkey is a decent browser if you cannot change the settings to your liking in your current browser.

Neil A

This thread is about the email Digest, not the website. :slight_smile:

Most email programs are a variety of browser. Mine allows me to designate fonts, just as I described for browsers earlier.

Neil A

I do not use web-based email.

Even email clients allow you to choose to over-ride the font an email specified. You just have to poke around in the settings to find where those controls are.

Yep. I think we should strive to make these digest emails readable and then beyond that there’s always extra settings that can be set in your browser or email program.

Thanks, Leah, today’s Summary was positively legible! Now real people can read it, not just 'bots…

The email Digest no longer sets off quotes. In this post, the only thing that I wrote was the last sentence at the bottom. Neil’s quote is the first sentence, appearing between my name above it and my post below it. His name and his sentence should be set off graphically as they were in the older format.


When I read this in the Digest, it looked like I was saying “Most email programs…” when it was in fact Neil.

In the present format, it looks confused because of poor formatting, particularly the line spacing. His name and quote should not have a line skipped between them and should be set off in a box. At very least, it should be a different font or style from my new post.

This old Digest formatting was much better:


And it made it very easy to choose between replying to the individual or replying to the group.

The way it was before the present major change was also better than the present form (I don’t have any examples). May I asked why it was changed?

Janet in Jerusalem

I wouldn’t change my default Email client settings for one sender. And I wouldn’t want to take the time to change it back and forth everyday just to read the Orchid Digest. Also, I think the Digest worked very well the way it was before this last major change.
Janet in Jerusalem

Hi @janetb, I’ll look into the formatting issues you raised. This new format of the digest happened because the last one broke and the developer who wrote the last digest specially for us is out of commission. So we are trying a new method to send those emails (using an RSS feed). We’re going to see if we can get this to look as good as the old digest or see if we can get the old digest code fixed.

I have no complaints on my laptop, everything shows up fine.

Are you referring to the web site or the email Digest? This Thread is about the Digest.