Help me save my poor eyes.

April 3, 2007 3:20 AM

Like most of you, I do a lot of reading online, but notice that some websites default the font size to a teeny, weeny size. I'd like to read these sites at a larger font size, but when I change the default in FF, from say 16 to 18, some pages don't display optimally (text is cut off by images, I need to scroll right to read, etc.) I believe GreaseMonkey can fix this so that the pages will read better at a larger size, but that's just a guess and I'm not sure how to use it. Any tutorials out there?
posted by zardoz to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

The problem is that FF doesn't scale the layout as well as the text. I don't know how GreaseMonkey could fix this.

One solution would be to use Opera, which is the only browser I know of that scales layout as well as text. (But automatically fits the width to the size of your screen, so you don't need to scroll vertically)
posted by cheerleaders_to_your_funeral at 3:48 AM on April 3, 2007

In a pinch you can always just drop the styles? Unstyle greasemonkey script... (haven't tried it, I just use the disable menu on the web developer toolbar.)
posted by Firas at 5:06 AM on April 3, 2007

Firefox 3 should resize text & images pleasingly. Try a beta in July. Until then anything that helps you on one site may not work on other all sites.
posted by gregoreo at 5:54 AM on April 3, 2007

Opera will do it and it's easy. + to inrease and - to (natch) decrease.
posted by heartquake at 6:14 AM on April 3, 2007

Best answer: You can use the Stylish extension for FireFox; it's like Greasemonkey but just for CSS, so you can tweak the font size and layout (and zap ads and other annoyances) on a per-site basis. Use the test styles and/or edit styles bookmarklet to find the tweaks that work, then copy your custom CSS into Stylish.
posted by foobario at 6:19 AM on April 3, 2007

Best answer: There's a Firefox extension called NoSquint that lets you adjust the font size on a per-site basis. Between that and setting a minimum font size in Firefox itself, you should be able to make most sites look acceptable.

(Obviously there's nothing you can do when a foolish site designer makes extremely poor choices. Nothing that's worth your time to do, anyway.)
posted by jellicle at 6:54 AM on April 3, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks, all. I think NoSquint will work great, just what I was looking for!
posted by zardoz at 7:25 AM on April 3, 2007

Even simpler:

In firefox, hold the control key and then use the scroll wheel on your mouse-- it will automatically resize the text on the page.
posted by stilly at 9:43 AM on April 3, 2007 [2 favorites]

Oh, you just want to randomly change the font size when you feel like it? In firefox press ctrl+ and ctrl-, then ctrl+0 to set it back to normal. I thought you were talking about increasing the font size selectively that way only to have things mess up etc.
posted by Firas at 9:58 AM on April 3, 2007

For what it's worth, making sites scale properly for folks like you is a big part of my job. So allow me to apologize on behalf of every web developer who either chose not to properly accommodate people who like to increase font sizes, or despite their best intentions could not do so due to time/designer leverage/other reasons outside of their control.

Meanwhile, the plugins mentioned above, and Opera as well, are good options. Also, don't be averse to switching to a smaller monitor resolution; my father had the best luck with that approach since it also scaled the OS fonts for him (despite the text becoming fuzzier in the process on his LCD monitor.)
posted by davejay at 1:34 PM on April 3, 2007