Fonts and icons too small in larger screen resolution

[Paul]

My wife has always preferred our desktop monitor's resolution to be set low,
at 800 x 600. Getting her ready for a nice new 19-inch LCD (1440 x900), I
decided to raise the old monitor's resolution (the highest it can support is
something like 2000x1600). It put it at 1280x1024 and the icons and fonts on
webpages look incredibly small. I went into the start menu properties and
told it to use large icons; and the settings in the desktop properties--I
change the font size to large. But as you can see, everything looks
incredibly small.

http://img242.imageshack.us/my.php?image=resolutionvz4.jpg

This monitor is an old Sony Trinitron, on its last legs. I'm not sure if
this will look good on a newer monitor... is there something I'm overlooking
here? I have a 15.4 inch laptop that has a resolution like 1280x900 or
something, and it looks normal. What do I need to do here to get a more
normal view, instead of the incredibly small fonts on the browser?
--
Paul

MS Office Pro 2003
XP Home
Dell Inspiron 1501

 

[Paul]

BTW I inserted a picture of an inch ruler (yes I made sure that it was
accurate in the screenshot) so people could see it in a proper scale.
--
Paul

MS Office Pro 2003
XP Home
Dell Inspiron 1501

 

[VanguardLH]

Right-click on the desktop and select Properties to open the Display
applet (or open it from Control Panel). Under the Settings tab, click
on the Advanced button. Under the General tab, up the DPI (dots per
inch) to display for a "pixel" size. I have mine up at the 120 DPI
setting (up from the 96 DPI default) which enlarges the fonts EVERYWHERE
(and not just for apps that let you change some of their graphic
attributes for objects displayed within them). Makes the screen a lot
easier to read without changing the screen resolution (something you
don't want to do on an LCD since the display gets fuzzy if not ran at
its native resolution). You'll have to judge if an increase in DPI
gives you the effect you want.

 

[Paul]

It did help on desktop icons, but the text on web browsers was still much the
same. Thanks for the suggestion.

At this point I'm thinking that I'll just adjust the resolution downward (on
the new monitor) if I have to, although I'm beginning to think that this
won't be necessary. When she uses my laptop she's fine (1280x800), as there
isn't the major shrinking of everything that you see on the desktop, so
perhaps the problem lies with some incompatibility with the 9 year old Sony
monitor. Thanks again tho.
--
Paul

MS Office Pro 2003
XP Home
Dell Inspiron 1501

 

[Jo-Anne]

Have you tried changing the font size in Internet Explorer? The simple way
is to to click on View | Text Size | Largest [or whichever size you want].
The disadvantage is that emails will then print in larger type--and some
webpages don't change the text size. The method I use is this: In IE, click
on Tools | Internet Options. At Appearance, click on Accessibility. At
Formatting, click on Ignore font sizes specified on webpages. This method
works for me, but it too has disadvantages. Sometimes the text lines will
bump into each other on a particular page. If that happens, I decrease the
Text Size in View until it's readable again.

Hope this helps!

Jo-Anne

 

[Paul]

Jo-Anne, I use Firefox as my primary browser, so any IE-specific settings
wouldn't solve the larger problem. Thanks regardless.
--
Paul

MS Office Pro 2003
XP Home
Dell Inspiron 1501

 

[Jo-Anne]

Try checking with the Firefox user forum(s). I'd hope that Firefox would
also offer this sort of feature.

Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne, I use Firefox as my primary browser, so any IE-specific settings
wouldn't solve the larger problem. Thanks regardless.
--
Paul

MS Office Pro 2003
XP Home
Dell Inspiron 1501

Have you tried changing the font size in Internet Explorer? The simple
way
is to to click on View | Text Size | Largest [or whichever size you
want].
The disadvantage is that emails will then print in larger type--and some
webpages don't change the text size. The method I use is this: In IE,
click
on Tools | Internet Options. At Appearance, click on Accessibility. At
Formatting, click on Ignore font sizes specified on webpages. This method
works for me, but it too has disadvantages. Sometimes the text lines will
bump into each other on a particular page. If that happens, I decrease
the
Text Size in View until it's readable again.

Hope this helps!

Jo-Anne