I have had a Toshiba m205 Tablet PC for a few weeks now. I like it fine as a laptop, but have to confess I haven't had all that much use for it as a Tablet, other than turning the screen around when I'm just reading websites and such. But that brings me to my biggest complaint about this computer, and it could ultimately be fatal.

The "native" font size is just too ****ed small. I'm 53, I wear reading glasses all the time, but I'm going to need a magnifying glass if I have to keep reading these tiny fonts much longer.

I have my screen set for its native resolution - 1400x1050. I have tried other, lower resolutions but the fonts are actually fuzzier in lower resolutions. So that's no solution.

I have also adjusted the the nView display settings to 120% of normal size, which translates to 115dpi. But that only seems to apply to fonts on the desktop, in the Windows title bars, etc.

Interestingly, this forum defaults to a perfectly readable font; another forum I was just visiting, the text was infintessimal.

With many other websites, I'm finding that going to the "view... text size" menu doesn't help. I'm not sure what the determining factor is, it must be somethign in the HTML code. Some websites have adjustable fonts, some do not.

So, anybody got any ideas? Is there some way I can improve the size of the fonts I'm looking at so it's not such a strain on these 50+ year old eyes?

TIA for any suggestions,

--PS

Hi,

Welcome to the forums. You seem to have a firm grasp on what is controlling the font size -- and that they are not centralized -- but you seem to know where to locate them. You are correct that the html can be defined so that there is a relative font size and then they are readable. This is completely up to the webdesigner - many of whom are very young.

I would suggest making sure that cleartype is enabled and that will clear up some of the text and make it easier to read.

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You have to go into "Internet Options" and click on "accessibility" and then check "ignore font sizes." Then you can set the default font of your choice in the "view" menu.

Details found here:

http://www.peterre.com/tinytype.html

Good advice. If that tip doesn't work for you, for some reason, then you might consider using the Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla, or Opera browsers. Unlike Internet Explorer, these browsers will let you expand the fonts, no matter how the web designer set the font sizes. Opera will also allow you to expand the graphics proportionally.

Internet Explorer is just not a good browser, and never was. Microsoft took some shortcuts and made some selfish decisions when it came to MSIE and FrontPage. Also, version 6 is 3 years old already, and some advances that you'll find in Mozilla, Firefox, etc. were either not around 3 years ago, or it was not clear back then how important they would be. The security concerns are still there -- SP2 of XP helped, but reportedly there are still 39 unfixed security flaws in IE6.

Mozilla and Firefox are neck-and-neck for being the best browser created so far, IMO. Classic Mozilla Suite offers easier control, via a better control panel. Firefox has easier, integrated access to extensions (toolbars, etc.) and themes (skins). Most of the control that classic Mozilla offers you can reproduce in Firefox, just by copying the right Mozilla classic files to the right places in your Firefox directories.

Just about every feature and toolbar in MSIE that you might want is either part of Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox already, or can be easily added by downloading the right Extension, and (again) Firefox makes that easy.

I have 3 thoughts about Opera:
1. As a consumer, Opera is good in some ways, and not in others. It's a fast browser, and better security than MSIE. It has advanced features like tabbed browsing and semi-transparency of PNG images. Worst thing is that it's really spyware, sending information to Google. Even if I'm not identified, it should be up to me whether I send Google information. Second, the Google ads take up too much screen space.

2. As a web designer, I hate Opera. It renders HTML funny, and there are no known CSS hacks to identify Opera uniquely, so I cannot make up for the oddities in rendering. If there were, I could compensate.

3. As a web site owner, Opera is great. Just surf your site in Opera, and you don't need to submit it to Google!

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