What's Wrong With the Font or Text Size?

Our site does not set the font or the text size. Many web sites do. Some web designers even use fixed text sizes, which means you can't increase the text size unless you force it. (We put instructions on how to do that in each section.) If you want a bigger text size, you may think those web designers are unthinking, arrogant clotpolls. We brilliant, gracious, thoughtful web designers agree with you.

You know what you like better than we do, so we use your default font and text size. (The default is what the computer does if no one tells it differently.) If your font or text size looks bad to you here, you may want to change your defaults using the instructions below.

Most of our visitors use some version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. This page has instructions for them just below, then sections for
Mozilla Firefox users,
Netscape users
A Font Test
Why a church web site has a font and text size page.

Microsoft Internet Explorer Users

Changing the default text size:

Click on
View > Text Size
Select one of the five sizes (Largest, Larger, Medium, Smaller or Smallest). You can do this as often as you like, as you surf from site to site. The browser will breathe upon the page in a couple of micro-seconds, refresh and - voila - the page will be big enough to read easily, if you enlarged the size, or small enough you don't have to scroll as often, if you reduced the size. If the size doesn't change, the web designers have used a fixed text size, which means they value their own taste more than their visitors' needs. You will have to live with it or force it. You may want to write to the web designer to explain your problem as well. They won't know they are annoying people if no one tells them.

If you have a wheel on your mouse, you can hold down the CTRL key and turn the wheel to change the text size.

Your browser defaults to meduim, but it will remember the last text size you used. So, if you want it to always be set to the Largest setting, close all of the windows but one, set the font size to largest, then exit the browser. The next time it comes up, it will be set to largest.

Changing the default font:

Click on
Tools > Internet Options > General > Fonts.
There will be two choices, Web Page and Plain Text. Pick a font you like for Web page. Arial and Verdana are both clean, modern and easy to read. Times New Roman is elegant. Try a few and select one you like. Courier is usually the only choice for the Plain Text Font. Recasting the page in a new font takes a second or two. If that doesn't work, the page isn't using your default font. You can force it, but if you do every page you go to will use the forced font. (See below.)

How to force Internet Explorer to change font and text size:

Click on
Tools > Internet Options > General > Accessibility.
Check the "Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages" box. Then, resize away.

You can also check "Ignore font styles" on the Accessibility window, which will put every page you visit into your default font.

Mozilla Firefox Users

Changing the text size:

Click on View > Text Size > Increase or Decrease

You may also use CTRL+ to increase text size or CTRL- to decrease text size. On many keyboards, "+" is a capital "=", but you don't use the shift key to change the text size, so CTRL+ is really CTRL=. Hold down CTRL with one finger and press the "+/=" key with another. Mozilla has 16 size gradations, compared to Microsoft IE's five. Score one for the little guys! (Also, if your eyes are really bad, consider downloading Mozilla Firefox and enlarging the text to "billboard").

Changing the default font:

Click on Tools > Options > General > Fonts & Colors

Choose fonts for Proportional, Serif, Sans-serif and Mono spaced. (A capital "M" and a lower-case "i" will be the same width in a mono-space font, different widths in the others.)

How to force Mozilla Firefox to change font and text size:

While you are in Fonts & Colors, look at the boxes labeled
"Always use my |_| Fonts |_| Colors".
They force the browser to use what you want, despite the choices someone else tried to make for you.

Netscape Users

Changing the text size:

Click on View > Increase Text Size or Decrease Text Size. You may also use CTRL+] to increase text size or CTRL+[ to decrease text size.
"CTRL+]" means you have to hold down the CTRL button with one finger and press "]" with another. ALT, CTRL and SHIFT all work the same way in one respect - they have to be held down while you press the other key. Pressing one after the other won't work.

Changing the font:

Click on Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Font. Choose your default fonts from the Variable Width Font and Fixed Width Font. For the Variable Width, Arial and Verdana are clean, modern and easy to read. Times New Roman is elegant. For the Fixed Width, Courier is the only real choice.

How to force Netscape to change font and text size:

Click one of the following:

• To specify that your default fonts are always used instead of the fonts chosen by a document's author, click "Use my default fonts, overriding document-specified fonts."
• To specify that page fonts are used only when they are available without downloading (saves time), click "Use document-specified fonts, but disable Dynamic Fonts."
• To specify that page fonts are always used, click "Use document-specified fonts, including Dynamic Fonts."

Font Test

Here four lines that show the difference between a fixed width font and a variable width font. Lower-case i and l are the narrowest letters. Upper-case M and W are the widest. You can see the narrow letters take up exactly as much space as the wide ones in the fixed-width font but much less space than the wide ones in the variable width font. There are 20 letters and 19 spaces in each line.

Fixed (Courier):
i l i l i l i l i l i l i l i l i l i l
M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W

Variable (Arial):
i l i l i l i l i l i l i l i l i l i l
M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W M W

Here are four more lines. We set the font in the first three. The fourth is your default font. If you like one of the first three better than your current default, you should change your default.

This is a test line in Arial, a clean, modern and narrow font.
This is a test line in Verdana, a clean, modern and wide font.
This is a test line in Times New Roman, a classic, elegant font.
This is a test line in your default variable width font. It may be identical to one of the fonts above; it may not.

Why a church has a font page

We're a small church - 135 members - in Modesto, California. Our web master has strong opinions about web design.