Computer Q - why is font sometimes SO small in Explorer?

Factual Questions
1

I’m a computer dunce, so please bear with me.

When I go into my yahoo mail, or go to another message board, the font for some aspects of it is very very small - like this small.

I run Windows XP, and it happens both at home and at work, and as I said, I’ve only noticed it in a couple of sites so far, and they are ones that I have to sign in to view.

Any ideas out there about why this is happening? Normal surfing, browsing etc appears fine …

Thank you!
S.

2

Check view->text size from the menu bar. If it is set to smallest you may see this. Some sites use relative font sizes, some use absolute. This setting only effects sites that use relative font sizes.

-Tom

3

The optimum way to make a website is to use relative font sizes in Cascading Stylesheets. This allows a user to adjust any page’s font to suit.

The biggest problem with that is each browser applies standards differently, effectively abusing the term ‘standard’. That means default sizes can vary, and the amount of change between ‘small, medium, large’ etc can also vary.

But the worst part is when a webpage doesn’t use relative sizes, and Internet Explorer doesn’t allow you to change the size to suit. You often end up with font sizes that are unreadably tiny.

It sucks, it needs to be fixed, and yet I suspect it won’t ever be.

4

If Font size don’t work - Click View - Encoding and select a Western and/or Auto select. Sometimes web sites use foreign fonts and you get stuck with the small size. Size does matter sometimes :smiley:

5

If a website doesn’t use a fixed font, like one in a cascading style sheet, you can adjust the font by holding down CTRL and shifting the wheel in your mouse (assuming you have a scroll mouse).

Personally I always set my browser to ignore font sizes on webpages, since most message boards seem illegible to be unless I make the font large. Since I set my font large, it wrecks pages like ESPN and others since their formatting is best seen in the desired font.

Sorry for the sidetrack there. = )

6

I’m guessing **harrngtn ** is correct. If not, you can always give firefox a go - it can increase the text size even for fixed text size webpages. I’m sure other browser can do that too, I just mentioned firefox because It’s the one I use.

7

If you don’t mind completely lousing up any visual formatting the web designer had in mind, you can set the same font-size for all text on all pages in IE6 on Windows XP (and I presume many other versions of IE, that’s just what I’m working with here).

  1. Open Notepad
  2. type in body {font-size: 14pt} (or whatever size you would like)
  3. When saving the document, be sure the Save as Type box is set to All Files, and that you know where it is ending up.
  4. Save the document as myfont.css (the “.css” part is all that’s important, the rest of thename could be anything that doesn’t have spaces in it)
  5. Open Internet Explorer
  6. Choose Tools->Internet Options
  7. Click the “Accessibility” button
  8. Check the “Format Documents Using My Style Sheet” box, and browse to your new file. Ok your way out.
  9. Voila!