The problem with browser minimum font size settings

Long ago, when I griped about Slashdot's redesign, Oscar del Rio left a comment suggesting that I use Firefox's minimum font size setting to cut this off. This isn't an approach that I like for a relatively simple reason: I'm willing to have some text set small, just not the main text.

I want websites to be able to set less important things in small font sizes, but I don't want them shrinking down the text I'm actually here to read. If I set Firefox's minimum font size up large enough that the main text is always readable, I completely take out the small font sizes on those less important things and they wind up too big.

(Yes, this is a hideously belated followup. Part of the fun of writing it was trying to figure out if I'd already written an entry talking about this; I ultimately resorted to trawling the archives with grep. Sometimes I am not the most organized blog-writing person in the world.)