So my kids were playing on my computer and now something weird is going on. For some reason, the font *on certain sites *is all screwed up.
For example, I open IE and it goes to my homepage (Yahoo) where everything looks normal. But on certain sites (e.g. Youtube) things are very screwy. Some of the type font is HUGE…so huge that one letter takes up half the screen…but SOME of the type font in other areas of the website appears normal.
When I adjust the “text size” on the “View” option to “smallest” it makes the regular sized font on the page smaller, but doesn’t seem to have any impact the HUGE font. WTF is going on here and how can I fix it?
It’s hard to tell exactly since the pages with huge font are difficult/impossible to read…but it seems like the advertising parts are HUGE, but the regular content isnt (though I could be wrong on this). On Youtube, the little screen where the video plays is normal sized and the text under “Related Videos” is normal sized…but the rest of the text on the page is GIGANTIC. Can anyone help?
Can’t help right now but hopefully will be soon able to. I recently had the same experience with huge fonts, but only on one site - on the King County (Washington) library site. I log into kcls.com, and their home page is normal. But if I go to my own account there, the font, is as you say, huge. This just started happening. I am the only one using this computer so I know that no one else did anything to it.
I have a message into their support site asking WTF. Will let you know if they can explain and/or fix it.
One more clue that might help diagnose this problem: Usually when I get to a site where the type appears too big or too small, I adjust it by holding the control key while turning the wheel on my mouse. On these sites (like Youtube) where the font is ridiculously huge, control+track wheel does nothing.
Oh thanks, let me know what you hear. Meanwhile we have some very computer savvy dopers here, so maybe one of these smart people will happen along and solve this problem for both of us…
This is the exact same thing done in two different ways, so it’s no surprise that you get the same results with both.
Websites have several different ways to implement font sizes. One is relative to your own settings, and one is fixed. In Firefox, even the fixed font sizes are adjustable, but as far as I know in IE the fixed remains fixed.
It sounds like the default setting for “fixed” fonts is set on extra big, which, because I don’t know IE very well anymore, I’m not sure where the setting is. And if you;'re in Vista, I don’t know where those settings are either. Though I don’t think it’s an OS problem.
Though actually the only way I can see that you might get an effect like the one you describe would be by deliberately creating a special style sheet and setting IE to use it by default. Are they computer savvy pranksters?
Try going to Tools==>Internet Options==>Accessibility (it is a button on the “General” tab that comes up first), and then unchecking anything that is checked there, especially “Format documents using my style sheet” and “Ignore font sizes specified on webpages”.
You might also want to click the Fonts button (also on the General tab) and make sure it is set to sensible fonts. The defaults seem to be “Latin based” language script, “Times New Roman” as webpage font, and “Courier New” as plain text font. So far as I can see, this area only controls font styles rather than sizes, but there are some fonts whose regular, default size is much bigger than others.
There are also some text size related options in the Accessibility section on the “advanced” tab of Internet Options. However, I do not see how they might have caused your problem. The default seems to be to have just the last two of those options set.
I am assuming you are using IE7. If not, the relevant settings might be in different places.
Well, I followed your suggestion but there were no check marks in “Accessibility”.
Given the irregular nature of font sizes, I then used the assumption my problem might well be “font sizes specified on web pages” so I decided to place a check mark there.
Preliminary check with Wikipedia pages suggest I may have solved the problem.
Well, I tried that bit about Tools, etc.etc. Accessibility, went to the page I was having trouble with, the library site, and it worked! The fonts were nice and normal again. Then I came back to this board to tell you all thanks and found that the fonts here were now a LOT bigger thn before. And on checking my home page, found that it was pretty screwed up too. So I changed the Accessibility - fonts thingy back to where it was. It appears that the solution in my case will be to change the fonts checkmark only when visiting the offending site, and change it back when finished. Luckily I don’t go there too often, so this is a work-around that won’t require too much effort.
Sometimes I wish I had a normal computer - on that’s not sporadically possessed by Evil Spirits.
Anyway, thanks for the advice. A partial solution is lots better than none!
That happened to me as well, but I preferred the somewhat larger font size. You could go to the “file edit view” tool bar at the top of the page and click on view, and drop to “text size” and decrease the font size down a notch or two. Its a quick operation that may only be required once.
