"TMP Text Size" Topic

Lately, the text on TMP has been HUGE on my computer. I need to scroll sideways to see everything. I seem to recall it wasn't always this way. I checked all of my settings and the rest of the internet is working normally.

Is anyone else having this difficulty?

Browser setting … (I have the same issue sometimes)

Can you expand on that? I fiddled with my browser settings until every other page on the net was too small to read but TMP remains the same regardless of how i adjust my browser.

Are you using a PC or Mac? On my iMac I can command + to increase or command- to decrease the screen size. These days it seems to remain the size I want for websites my iMac remembers.

@Cyotepunc

I can only give details for Chrome.

If you're using Chrome, click on the settings tab in the top-right, and you'll see the Zoom setting (below Bookmarks). If you set that at … say 125% … it "should" (LMFAO!) result in all pages being displayed at 125% normal size, but with page size/borders/margins etc. taken into account. I.e. you'll see the page as if it were coded at that display size.

I hold the control key down while moving my mouse wheel. This allows me to change the size of what is showing on the screen.

My browser also has a "View" option in the header bar (not really a button), which I can click on, and then easily choose other sizes.

I usually leave it at 100%, but do occasionally switch to 200% – 400% to see detailing on various images.

Easy to switch back and forth that way, instead of having to change computer settings, permanently.

Obviously there are ways to do it on the fly.

But I'm getting on and my eyes ain't what they used to be, so I just have everything a bit bigger all the time to save faffing about :-)

Part of the power of HTML is that unless you explicitly tell it otherwise the user controls the display of information (through the browser and its settings), not the provider. With that power comes the responsibility to control your own browser and put the effort into adjusting it.

Even if the information provider tells it otherwise, the user can still override that.

Well, that's the theory. The intent of HTML was that providers would only tag content and not format for display. From the beginning, content providers tried to create (nifty) formatting control by reverse engineering the expected display parameters on browsers. From there, HTML evolved into exactly the opposite of its intent – controlling form rather than specifying function for content.

Viewing the source HTML (another thing all users can do through their browser) of this page (which is not all of TMP), the "overriding formatting" with which TMP tags its content does not specify text sizes in absolute terms. (Fortunately for this exercise, TMP uses an embedded style sheet on its pages, not one linked in from another file that I may or may not be able to directly access.) It specifies them in terms relative to the user's browser settings.

The upshot of this (part of the cost of the responsibility) is that your computer hardware, browser, operating system, maybe but not likely other applications, and possibly things hanging around from other browser use that didn't get cleaned up properly all contribute a part in how the text from TMP is displayed, but not the TMP page itself.

So if you want to change the experience, you need to change the settings for one (or more, depending) of those things controlling the experience.

The thing I don't understand is why this only affects TMP. I mostly post from my phone, so it is no issue at all 90% of the time.

I am going to try Coopman's ctrl + mouse wheel the nect time I am on the computer.

And etotheipi, thank you for analyzing the source code. Now I know it is definitely just something weird on my end.

Part of the "only TMP" would be what other sites you visit on your phone. If you visit more modernly styled sites, they may automatically redirect you to a version that is optimized for a mobile device.

It takes a little nerdhow, but I find that optimizing for yourself rather than having others guess what your optimization is yields much better results. I do a lot of that to support accessibility both based on the individual or the situation (creating a wrapper for reformatting a web page for a handheld tactical device rather than recreating a special version).

Ctrl + mouse wheel did not fix the problem on it's own. but it did give me a popup to "Restore default?" which did the trick.

Thanks, guys!