Override IE's View/text size option?

[Steve Hoffmann]

Is there code that will allow you to keep your text at designed size
even when the viewer has specified a larger or smaller text in Internet
Explorer's 'View/text size' drop down? I've seen pages that you can't
change the viewed text size in MS IE but can in Netscape's 'View/text
zoom'. Can someone point me in the right direction=3F Thanks!

 

[Jon Spivey]

Hi,
you can spcify font sizes with pixels, eg
p{
font: 14px "Trebuchet MS, arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
}

This will prevent text being resized with View - Text Size but knowledgeable
users can still resize the text, it's just a little more difficult.

 

[Steve Hoffmann]

Hi,
you can spcify font sizes with pixels, eg
p{
font: 14px "Trebuchet MS, arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
}

This will prevent text being resized with View - Text Size but knowledgeable
users can still resize the text, it's just a little more difficult.

 

[Wally S]

But doing this may annoy some of your visitors because they cannot see the
site as they want, especially, but not limited to, people with visual
impairment.

The ability of the viewer to change the size of the font on his screen is
simply something that you have to take into consideration when designing a
site.

Wally S

 

[Jon Spivey]

I'd agrre with that to a point. My feeling is anyone who can't read 14px
text has vision problems serious enough that they would either
1/ learn how to resize pixel sized text in IE - it is possible and just
takes a couple of minutes
2/ use a different browser that makes text resizing easier
3/ write their own stylesheet for IE

Everything on the web is a trade off - in this case I don't think setting
text to 14px is going to lose users. The problem comes when people set tiny
text 12 or 10 px or even worse pts

 

[Bob Lehmann]

Vision problems aren't the only consideration.

While I agree that 14px should be OK, many users are running high res - I'm
at 1600x1200 - and not being able to adjust the font size is a problem.

PS - My vision isn't all that great either, so the prolem is compounded.

Bob Lehmann

 

[Jon Spivey]

You're in the computer business though. I'm sure if you wanted to adjust
pixel sized text in IE you'd know how to, you'd find out or you'd use
firefox. It's fair to assume anyone running high res knows how to use a
computer - Joe User (who's likely to not be so knowledgable) isn't running
1600*1200.

I think the best answer to this question would be to use pixel sized text
along with a "increase text size" button wired up to some simple script that
pulls in a new stylehseet with text say 2px bigger. This is more user
friendly than View Text Size for users that need it as the text size is
maintained across pages without needing to adjust on every page - if I was
doing a text heavy site, news etc, this is the way I'd go.