Web browsing with a hi-res display?

February 16, 2008 10:08 PM

Optimal web browsing with a high resolution (1920x1200) display?

I have two computers with high resolution displays (1920x1200). They're great for graphics, but they suck for web browsing.

The problem is that in the default settings (using IE), the text is way too small.

Zooming in works fine for pages of fixed width (e.g. news sites like NYTimes.com), but it doesn't work well for most blogs and forums, because the lines of text end up being wider than the display, and you then have to scroll left and right.

I've also tried increasing the text size, which works OK for some sites, but on others the lines of text run together if the text is too big.

Surely there must be a better way to deal with this, aside from individually adjusting the zoom and text size every time I got to a new web page?

posted by mikeand1 to computers & internet (12 comments total)

There's an extension for Firefox called No Squint that remembers zoom settings for web pages between sessions, so every time you go to the NYT, for instance, it adjusts to your customized settings for that site automatically. Works wonders.
posted by words1 at 10:20 PM on February 16, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

"There's an extension for Firefox called No Squint"

That works well, except that I don't like how Firefox tries to increase the text size while cramming a fixed-width website into the same width. By contrast, IE will take a website like NYTimes.com and make it wider as you zoom in.

Is there a way to make FreFox do that?
posted by mikeand1 at 10:47 PM on February 16, 2008

Proper zoom functionality isn't in the current version of Firefox, and there's really no good way to get it. It is, however, a planned feature for Firefox 3. You'll either have to switch to Opera/IE7 or wait for the Firefox 3 beta.
posted by theiconoclast31 at 10:56 PM on February 16, 2008

*You'll either have to switch to Opera/IE7 or get the Firefox 3 beta.
posted by theiconoclast31 at 10:57 PM on February 16, 2008

Firefox 3 (beta 3) zooms in like IE - making everything bigger, including the width. I believe this is your desired behavior. Try Firefox 3 - I recommend the Portable Edition because then you don't have to stop using Firefox 2, for instance if you find a bug that hinders your browsing ability.

Unfortunately, No Squint isn't compatible with Firefox 3 - but you could try making it install anyway and see if it works.

If No Squint does work in FF3, then it should be perfect for your needs. If not, then keep looking, sorry.

-Ricket
posted by Ricket at 11:00 PM on February 16, 2008

"If No Squint does work in FF3, then it should be perfect for your needs."

Yes, that seems to work. Now we're getting somewhere.

My only complaint is that Ctrl-Scroll doesn't work for zooming now, but that's a minor complaint
posted by mikeand1 at 11:12 PM on February 16, 2008

Opera. You can customize it fairly easily in Opera, fit to width, zoom, and a combination of disable positioning (tables / CSS) usually gets it an easily readable format for me.
posted by bigmusic at 11:13 PM on February 16, 2008

"You can customize it fairly easily in Opera,"

Does it remember settings for specific websites?
posted by mikeand1 at 11:20 PM on February 16, 2008

Something else you might care to play with is right-clicking on the desktop, selecting Properties, clicking the Settings tab, clicking Advanced, and changing the DPI setting from the default 96 to something larger, and rebooting. This will make text bigger in almost all Windows applications, and with often but not always scale graphics up as well. If your favorite apps don't end up looking horribly broken when you do this, it might suit you.
posted by flabdablet at 3:32 AM on February 17, 2008

I've got a similar problem with using a Mac mini connected to a 37" HDTV - and none of the solutions I've tried have been successful. Can't see it getting any better in the long run, particularly whilst web pages force their own styles upon the viewer.
posted by Chunder at 4:22 AM on February 17, 2008

If you're careful about adjusting the DPI (like flabdablet suggests), then when applications say "100%" it'll actually be life-size.
posted by philomathoholic at 8:44 AM on February 17, 2008

>"You can customize it fairly easily in Opera,"

Does it remember settings for specific websites?

I'm a long-time Opera user, and I don't believe that Opera remembers zoom settings for specific websites. The only site-specific display setting I found was to choose a separate CSS for a site. However, you can set up Opera so that the default zoom level is higher. On my 1600x1200 monitor, I set up Opera to open up every page with a 150% zoom.

Zooming in/out is easy with Opera and keyboard shortcuts (setup by default):

6 = zoom to 100%
7 = zoom out by 100%
8 = zoom in by 100%
9 = zoom out by 10%
0 = zoom in by 10%

You can also turn off any over-designed web site's CSS by pressing shift-G. This will destroy any fancy formatting, but guarantees text will be rendered in a legible form. Shift-F11 will force pages to fit in the width of your browser, usually not required if you turn off CSS.
posted by meowzilla at 9:21 AM on February 17, 2008