This will be a bit subjective, I'm afraid, but I'd value the advice of the Collective.

Our web application lists documents that users can download; standard file navigator stuff:

Type   Name     Created       Size
-----------------------------------
PDF    Doc 1    01/04/2010    15 KB
PDF    Doc 2    01/04/2010    15 MB

Currently we list the file size as text, but I'd like to improve this by having some way of showing visually whether the file is tiny, normal or huge.

The reason for this is so that users can scan the list quickly and spot files that are likely to take a long time downloading.

My options currently are:

• Bigger font sizes for bigger files (drawback: the layout can become untidy)
• Icons (like a wi-fi signal strength indicator; drawback: harder to scan)
• Keep all sizes in KB so the number of zeroes indicates size (drawback: users have to calculate the "friendly" size in their heads)

I know this is quite a minor thing, but I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts on the matter!