At one point, it was decided that people will want to customize the content they view. I am certain I must have missed the day when this was debated - it must have happened in the late nineties while I was too busy reading Wired magazine to follow technology. At one point though, someone has to have mentioned that it would be useful to be able to scale fonts. Well, actually in those days you could, but I digress. I mean to say that, when some one says "hey, you can have control over all the sites you view", what is the answer supposed to be? "I'd like a Halloween orange background, and could you turn the links into stainless steel cooking utensils that wiggle when I'm near?". No. Just let me read the damn content. Or in the case of others (who aren't me), "let me look at the damn pictures".

So there was a flurry of activity, and for years we learned about how this would lead to a point when all our suffering would end. Sure enough, one day I woke up and Jim Barksdale was gone - along with the two handed 'N' thing he was so fond of doing. And we got pixel fonts, and style sheets. Don't like the way a website looks? Well now you can eeeaaassily transform them with your own custom style sheet. Well hurrah, except, um, that's generally on the server, no? Fear not, you can override all websites to use your own style sheet. Well, there are a few problems with this:

1) What if you only want fonts bigger on sites where they are too small?
2) Bigger fonts often destroy the layout.
3) Even if you force a larger font, line spacing can sometimes stay as it was making it unreadable.
4) Nobody but dorks like you and I know this, and is buried in some obscure accessibility panel in IE. And even if they did, are they going to code their own?

But hey, if you want to view an rss feed, with self describing data cleanly separated from the presentation, across multiple platforms(!), sorted by bran content!!, with a seasonal Halloween orange background!!!, while enjoying kamasutra position number god damn 24 with your pet!!!! -- you can get that today. If you want to read it when it is too small however, well, that is going to take an evening with a few RFCs, and perhaps a little programming on your part.

This is a typical inbred geek solution in many ways. It solves a more interesting problem that didn't exist. It aggravates the original problem. The telltale sign of inbreeding though, is the computer ends up with a better understanding of the data than the person meant to view it. Ok, I'm lying here, the telltale sign of inbreeding is generally a wandering eye and two shotguns mounted in the back of a pickup. But we should still be worried when technology treats the computer better than the user. Things do escalate, and before you know it, you can end up tied to a tree squealing like a pig.

Something to chaw on anyhoo...