Forum Font sizeoption for those getting older…

[Mike Barney]

Ryan et al, any chance of putting a +/- or “Larger Font” button to make BPL forum font easier to read? There are many websites that have a 1 click button that aid those of us pushing bifocals by locally increasing the font size. Changing the View / Text Size screws up other sites, so switching back and forth is a real pain.
Thanks,
MikeB

[Ryan Jordan]

Hi Mike,

We’re coding this right now. It will be available not only in the forums, but for the rest of the website as well.

Best,
Ryan

[Mike Barney]

That’s really impressive!! Less than 12 minutes and your already working on MY request! Thats service!

Would the <correct> lottery numbers for this Saturday be asking too much? :)

[Ryan Jordan]

I meant, by right “now” that it’s one of our active projects. I wasn’t actually writing code right that minute! But soon…within a week or two, perhaps.

[Siegmund Beimfohr]

Ryan, as long as you’ve mentioned active forum improvement projects, just thought I’d make sure you had seen the thread I posted suggesting visited link color and thread name improvements:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/xdpy/forum_thread/4579/index.html?skip_to_post=32540#32540

No responses so far ):
Glad we’re working on changes – thanks.

[paul johnson]

Mike,

If you’re on a Windows platform, then changing text size is really quite simple and painless.

If you’re using Internet “Exploder” (i don’t use it, preferring Firefox which, IMHO, is a much better browser with some very nice features – some finally included in IE7), now, where was i…oh yes…

if you’re using Internet “Exploder”, just click the “View” pull-down menu and select the “Text Size” sub-menu, then select the menu choice you desire to make the font larger or smaller.

It’s similar on Firefox, i.e. click the “View” pull-down menu and then click the “Text Size” sub-menu and your choices will be displayed. Take NOTE of the “hot” key combos that you can use to very quickly and easily change the font size. I use the “hot”-key combos from time to time. Did you notice the ctrl-0 (zero)? This makes it real easy to restore the default font size that you selected in the Firefox browser’s Options control panel. You don’t need to keep track of “how many times did i increase the size of my font the other day?”. A simple ctrl-0 restores the default font size.

Depending upon the screen resolution you are using you might be able to get one or more font/text size increases without having a horizontal scroll bar appear on the bottom of the page.

I think Firefox is available for the Apple crowd also, and it’s certainly available for the Linux crowd (though they all already know this being the savvy bunch that they are).

Hope this helps.

[Eric Noble]

Firefox is available for Mac OS X and quite popular. Safari is the browser that most OS X users are likely to use. In Safari, under the View menu choose Make Text Bigger.

[Ryan Jordan]

It seems that most, if not all, of the new browsers are supporting this (easy font resizing) now. I’ve found keyboard shortcuts on all of my browsers.

For example, in Mac OS, Firefox, click Apple(+) or Apple(-).

I’m now reconsidering whether or not it’s worth it to offer this on the website, when it can be handled so easily on the client’s end.

[Phil Barton]

Ryan, given the ease of changing font size from the browser, it seems you should spend your efforts elsewhere.
Thanks for the great site and responsiveness.
Phil

[Siegmund Beimfohr]

Ryan, I agree with Phil; font size is non-issue. Maybe link color..?

[Mike Barney]

The nice part of the forum is lots of input. Because of the differences in font size of many different sites, I do believe it will make a difference.

Appreciate it.

Thanks,
MikeB

[paul johnson]

Just two comments on font size option suggestions (which at this point in time i don’t happen to require):

1. On Windows OS there are also the “Accessibility Options” with the “Screen Magnifier”. Probably anyone who requires this option for viewing ALREADY knows about it.

2. There’s probably a difference in using a Browser’s +/- font size vs BPL Forum programming. Using just the Browser’s ability to adjust Font/Text Size, the Posts (and WebPage) can become too wide to fit in the width of the Browser’s window, resulting, at some point as font size in increased, the appearance of a horizontal scroll bar necessitating not only vertical scrolling to view the entire Post/Thread, but also horizontal scrolling to read a complete line.

If this problem is solved programmatically by BPL, the result would be diffrent. Since i don’t know precisely how BPL would implement the programming i can’t be 100% sure, but if it were in the Java programming language (sorry, i program daily in Java, NOT JavaScript so i can’t comment on its capabilities) the following would be true: Java GUI objects (both AWT and Swing components), such as a JTextArea in which each Post’s text would be presented, would handle the formatting of the increase/decrease in Font Size appropriately so that each POST would be sized properly for the current widths of the JTextArea containing each Post’s text. As font size is increased or decreased, the width of each JTextArea containing a Post’s particular text would NOT increase, only the size of the text in it. The height of each JTextArea would need to resized though to accomodate the text’s new size. There are methods that handle this sizing automagically though. So, no horizontal scroll bar would be necessary, though perhaps in EXTREME increases in font size only one or two words would appear on each line of text.

Hope this explanation is clear. If BPL wants to discuss this matter further, they may just PM me.

[Brett .]

PJ, I tried your suggestion regarding text size in my windows browser, but it only affected the text in the menu bar on the left and top, not the forum body text. I assume the effect would be the same on anyone else using IE, so maybe Ryan should go ahead with the coding solution for some of the subscribers.

[paul johnson]

Brett,

You are quite right. I didn’t try IE6 before posting. I use FireFox. Using the ctrl-+ hot-key combo in FireFox, increases ALL text on the webpage, including the POST text. Very quick and easy to do without removing one’s paws from the keyboard.

Give FireFox a whirl. It’s a superior browser to IE6, and earlier, in many respects, so much so, Mr. Gates has chosen to “borrow” some of the FireFox features for IE7.

Best of all it’s FREE.

I totally agree with you on CODING being the optimal solution, particularly since this fix, is NOT a “band-aid” like changing the browser’s current font size, since a code fix will NOT result in horizontal scrolling being required if the font is made several sizes larger.

On the other side of the coin, s/w enhancements are normally phased in with those correcting the most severe “bugs”, or giving the most “bang for the buck”, or those req’d by most users being implemented first.

Thanks again for the correction. I appreciate the time that you spent posting.

[Note: BTW, i enjoy your posts. Good words in them.]

[Author]

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