Practicing the Black Art (06/02)
Controlling font size on Web pages
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@comcast.net
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
One topic that usually surfaces during any conversation about reading electronic text is the difficulty of reading from a screen and the general unfriendliness of Web page text. While in such discussions I usually find myself spouting the standard phrase "yes, but on the screen you can adjust font and font size" or "reading is a learned behavior". English speaking people like Americans are taught to begin reading at the top left corner and work their way across the page from left-to-right until they reach the bottom right corner. Any design working against this principle may frustrate readers. For example, if you place the headline in the middle of the page, readers will have to return to the top before they can begin reading the body text, which contradicts natural eye movement.
As we grow more experienced in life, we tend to view things differently than in our youth. Along with maturity we come to view text differently as we read. It does get harder to read that small type, doesn't it? The type really isn't smaller, but we can't focus our eyes the same way we did when we were teens. A ten year old can focus on the end of his nose. That ability to focus on close objects tends to deteriorate with most of us as we get older. One day we notice that reading isn't as easy as it used to be, and we are playing trombone with our books, magazines, and newspapers.
There's nothing we can do about the size of type on the hard copy materials we read, but did you know you can change the font size on most Web pages? Let's give it a try.
- Open Control Panel.
- Open Internet Options.
- Locate the Accessibility... button on the General tab of the Internet Properties dialog box. It's down by the bottom left hand corner. (See Illustration).
- Click the Accessibility... button.
This opens the Accessibility dialog box. Here is where we tell Internet Explorer to ignore font sizes on Web pages.
5. Check the box labeled Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages.
This option tells Internet Explorer that you now can override the default size of fonts. When you read a web page, you can dynamically change the font size to accommodate those tired old eyes. You still can't affect the size and shape of any graphic images on the page, but remember that old saying about half a loaf. Let's try it out.
- Sign on to the Internet, and find a Website with a lot of text.
- From the tool bar of your Internet Explorer browser, open the View menu.
- Move your mouse pointer over Text Size.
- Select a text size option that suits your needs.
Have a more enjoyable trip through the World Wide Web. :
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Copyright 2002. This article is from the June 2002 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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