Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County

What's Wrong With the Text Size?

Our site does not set 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. 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. We put instructions on how to force the text size in each section.

Most of our visitors use Microsoft Internet Explorer. This page has instructions for them just below, then sections for
Mozilla Firefox users,
Netscape users
A Font Test (opens new page)
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 zoom in or out, but this will make the pictures bigger too, and may mean you have to scroll horizontally.

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.

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").

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.

How to force Netscape to change font and text size:

• 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

Wonder what your default font is? Try our Font Test (new page)

Why a church has a font page

This page is a service to the general public. It came about when one of our members complained that our web site font was ugly. It turned out her son had set her default font to "Algerian" as a joke. Up until March 2011, we didn't set the font face, so what you saw was your PC's default. We now use Arial, a clean, modern font. We tell you on how to force a different font because not everyone likes Arial.

To set your default font:
MSIE: Tools > Internet Options > Font
Firefox: Tools > Options > Content

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