How to Enlarge Fonts on a Webpage
The Internet is a very useful tool for research and entertainment. Much of the content on the Internet is coded in text, like blogs, journals, and forum threads and posts. While most text-based content is designed to be readable and easy on the eyes, there are some people who still find it difficult to read text posted on webpages because they are far too small. If you’re a designer or if you use the Internet to post and read text, here are some tips to make things clearer and more readable.
Compliance and Standards
Designers find it fun to experiment with font sizes and font styles to make aesthetically-pleasing webpages. Yet content is still king; people will not stay long on a beautiful, pretty page if the fonts are too small to read. Adhering to Web standards is encouraged, so that no issues with strain and compliance will come up.
looking at a webpageIf you’re a designer and you intend to make your own webpage readable, here are some tips you should keep in mind:
Use CSS. Cascading style sheets (CSS) are considered the Web industry standard for designing and constructing pages. CSS takes up less bandwidth, and is more flexible than HTML. Almost all websites now use CSS exclusively, or components of CSS are integrated with the HTML code already used in the page.
Use the base font size. The standard font size for reading text on a computer screen is 12px. In CSS, the standard font size is expressed as 1em. Try not to tweak around the standard font size as much as possible to preserve the page’s compliance. If you work on pages with a lot of text, you should consider building the visual elements of the site around the text content.
Use compliant fonts. Stick with standard fonts. If you need to use special, uncommon fonts, it’s best to integrate them into the page as images instead of actual text.
Enlarging Font Sizes When Browsing
There are many interesting and important sources of text content on the Internet that are not compliant with Web standards, and may result in pages with very small fonts. Enlarging fonts during browsing is pretty much standardized in major browsing software like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Google Chrome:
Ctrl + Mouse wheel. Hover the pointer on the page and hold the “Ctrl” key. Move the mouse wheel up or down to increase or decrease font size.
Ctrl + + or Ctrl + -. If your computer does not have a mouse wheel, you can use the “+” or “-” keys on your keyboard to increase or decrease font size. Press and hold the “Ctrl” key as you press “+” to increase the font size, and “-” to decrease the view size.
Use the Magnifier
Some people may find it difficult to read text, even with the options installed in a browser. A magnifier (like the one that already comes with the Accessibility toolkit of Windows) is very useful for the visually impaired. The mouse acts as a pointer for another application running in the foreground, which increases the size of the background (in this case, the browser). The magnifier is especially useful for people with a very limited visual range, but are not completely blind.
The Internet is a great source of information, particlarly for blogs, research data, and documents. With these tips to help you increase font size, reading text-based content goes back to the basics of good content that will keep people coming back for more.