Sunday 5 February 2012

Blog Layout

Monica from Beyond the Lone Islands has been having problems with the text on this blog being too small. In addition the pictures push over the sidebar to the right.  I have no problem either on my 15" Macbook nor my 9" Windows Notebook.  I don't have a problem on any browser - Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Rockmelt or Safari  (I have only tested Internet Explorer 8 on my Notebook and that's ok too).  I'm wondering if anyone else is having problems.  This is the standard Verdana text set in my template.  It was was set at 14px but I've now increased it to 16px.

Monica from Beyond the Lone Islands has been having problems with the text on this blog being too small. In addition the pictures push over the sidebar to the right.  I have no problem either on my 15" Macbook nor my 9" Windows Notebook.  I don't have a problem on any browser - Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Rockmelt or Safari  (although I don't use Internet Explorer so I can't comment on that).  So I'm wondering if others are having problems too.  This is Verdana set on the composition page as normal. 

Monica from Beyond the Lone Islands has been having problems with the text on this blog being too small. In addition the pictures push over the sidebar to the right.  I have no problem either on my 15" Macbook nor my 9" Windows Notebook.  I don't have a problem on any browser - Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Rockmelt or Safari  (although I don't use Internet Explorer so I can't comment on that).  So I'm wondering if others are having problems too.  This is Verdana set on the composition page as large.

If you are having problems with reading my blog or seeing the pictures please can you comment.  Do you have any preference for a size of font?

23 comments:

  1. No problems for me :) Normal does look small in this entry though...

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  2. Not a problem for me either. The Verdana set on the composition page as normal does looks smaller here.

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  3. No problems and I, personally, prefer the normal {second? choice}

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  4. I have no problems but stick to Chrome.

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  5. The third font is the eastiest for me to read but my eyes are pretty weird so I'm nothing to go by. I think Monica's problem can be solved by reducing the size of the browser input. I used to have to do it for one or two sites but I've forgotten how. Perhaps Helen knows. I think it had something to do with using the mouse wheel.

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  6. The third font - large - is the best for me. It allows me to keep the whole pictures AND read the text, without having to go back and forth with ctrl+/-. (I have no idea what 'reducing the size of browser input' means but I suspect that's what I'm already doing)

    The complicating factor for me on this blog is that when I enlarge enough to read the text comfortably, the pictures half disappear under the sidebar. With most blogs, it's the sidebar that goes out of sight instead, which matters less. I always just put this down to different blog templates behaving differently; but if I'm the only one experiencing it, now of course I'm getting mystified.

    I'll email you some screendumps Graham and then maybe you'll get a better idea what happens at my end.

    (Btw I notice Heather's reply that she prefers the second, "normal" text size... I could have guessed! since I have problems with hers too. But because of different template/ layout, different problems!)

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  7. If things don't fit on the page then you can zoom out using Ctrl- (i.e. hold down control and then press the - key). You can zomm in with (yes you guessed it) Ctrl+. To return to the default try Ctrl0.

    I've had problems in the past with the images getting cut off as they end up pushed behind the sidebar. The problem here isn't your blog as such but rather the resolution of the screen on my netbook. Notice I said resolution and not size. The notebook defaults to 1024x600, and with the wide sidebar there isn't much room for the 800px wide photos you use so they tend to get cut off as they get shoved behind the sidebar.

    I avoid all these problems on my blogs by sticking to a fix width layout where all the content is constrained to fall within 980px. This means that on any resolution of 1024 wide or above the content always looks and flows the same not matter the size or resolution of the monitor -- I can't imagine there are two many people viewing at 800x600 anymore). Of course that does mean that on my main monitor at home, over half the width of the browser window goes unused as the content appears in a normal middle column. Personally I prefer this though as it means I know that my blog will look mostly the same no matter who reads it and on what.

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    1. Mark - I ALWAYS use ctrl+/-. I can't think of any website I don't have to enlarge. The 'problem' here on GB's blog for me has been that I have to keep zooming in and out - at least until he just kindly increased the font when I mentioned it. My laptop screen resolution is 1600 x 900 (recommended, and if I put it lower, things get blurry instead, which is not an improvement). I think you're right about the layout width, I'm just not familiar enough with the correct terminology to explain it!!!

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    2. Yes, if you change the resolution away from the recommended (in either direction) things tend to get blurry, often blurry enough to give you a wonderful headache!

      The problem is that Ctrl+/i zooms the whole page including the images, and then they end up so large they get cut off by the sidebar.

      I think the trick might be to increase the default font size used by your browser. I don't know which browser you use, but if you are in Firefox then on the content tab of the preferences dialog you can set the default font size. In Chrome there are some similar settings as well. Some websites will override the default with a specific font size, but many will do a percentage based sizing, which is then calculated using this default. You may find you can increase the default size and then very rarely need to use ctrl+/-. And this has the advantage of only messing with the font-size and not zooming the images as well, which means they should stay within the width of the post and not get cut off under the side bar

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    3. And I've just checked, changing the default font size in Firefox definitely effects the font size on this blog.

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    4. First of all I had no idea one could do that, and could not find anywhere to do it. Then I went looking for and found an add-on. Then I used it. Then things got even weirder. If I increase the font in the FF settings, the font in GB's first paragraph here gets smaller instead of bigger. And the other way round (if I decrease the FF settings, the text gets bigger). But in the other two paragraphs the effect was different. At some point, the first and the second paragraph were exactly alike. (From the beginning, the middle paragraph was the smallest for me.) Now I've got a headache and I've forgotten my original default setting...

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    5. I'd probably try removing the addon and see if that fixes it (type about:addons in the address bar of firefox and then click on Extensions to see what you have installed) as increasing the font should definitely make the text larger! I think the default on Windows is size 16, so if you usually click Ctrl+ a few times I'd try setting it to 18 or 20 and see what happens.

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    6. Correction: Actually it was probably just an illusion that the first paragraph was affected at all. It was just the other two getting bigger, while the first paragraph remains the same. (Confirmed by checking a couple of other posts.) And not helping that I still have to enlarge extra to see what I'm writing in the comment box, where the text appears really tiny... (now I'm laughing) Never mind my whining, I'll hang on!

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    7. Mark it seems we were posting across each other. As I just said, NOTHING whatsoever happens with the first template-set paragraph. Only with the second and third paragraph, i.e. the ones GB notes as set on the composition page. Oh, and it also made a difference on my own blog (where I don't need it). But not here. (And I don't think I was actually using the add-on, I just thought I was! I'm feeling more stupid by the minute. I can only hope that somewhere at the back of my brain I'm learning something even if I'm not sure what yet.)

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    8. Right, that makes sense. The first paragraph has been given a specific size by GB when he wrote the post, but the second and third are using the scaled sizes of normal and Large so they become percentages of the browsers default font. The downside, as you discovered, is that this change applies to all blogs even those where a percentage above 100 is already being used, so big fonts get even bigger. Not sure that there is much you can do about that. Hopefully the change GB has made to a slightly larger font should solve most of the problems. Doesn't fix the photos being chopped off on my netbook though where I can't make the resolution any bigger. To see everything there I actually have to zoom out (ctrl-) so using a bigger font will help a little, as it won't be quite so small when I've zoomed out/

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  8. Mmmm,I prefer the normal too.

    SP

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  9. re: CJ's comment... if you hold down ctrl and rotate the mouse wheel this also zooms in/out

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  10. It seems that only Monica was having a significant issue and that if I alter my blog settings it is not going to help unless I alter the size of my photos and layout completely. Hopefully, Monica, you will manage to sort things out. In the meantime I think the increase I've made from 14px to 16px will stay because it doesn't seem to incommode anyone and Monica has indicated (separate email) that that is better for her.

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  11. Thank you so much Graham for being so obliging. I does help me quite a bit so I just hope it does not inconvenience anyone else.

    Thanks also to Mark; even if your suggestions did not solve the problem I do think they made me understand a little better what happens.

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  12. I only saw this post today, but I have never had any trouble reading your blog. The font size was already very comfortable before, and my eyes ARE bad.

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  13. It's a pleasure Monica. Thanks for the response Meike. I'm glad that it suits you.

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  14. I like the one you usually use, or the 'large'. But mostly, I'm glad you are dark on light. I have trouble reading blogs that are white on black. It's especially frustrating when it's a good blog!

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