Is there something wrong with my browser or is Alex doing...

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Have you done something to prevent browsers resizing the text? I seem to remember there is something you can do in CSS to force a particular font size irrespective of the users browser settings. This font is definitely smaller than it has been. It is a struggle to see the text.

I have Firefox set to use a minimum font size of 14. This looks nearer to 8.

Well that seems to make the message text back to the size it was; but leaves some text unchanged e.g. under the avatars but it over-enlarges the edit text. So it seems the relationship between the different fonts used on the site is no longer consistent. It does seem strange that my minimum font size of 14 is being ignored though

I guess I could get used to it, pressing ctrl++ every time I log on to the site and pressing ctrl-- to enter or edit messages then doing ctrl++ again afterwards; but it seems somewhat clumsy.

Instead of downloading the same files every time a page is loaded, browsers often cache stylesheets(the files which dictate the styles of elements on web pages) as well as images and javascript files, so before posting I would hold shift and reload the page. That does a full refresh of the page, which downloads the most recent copies of all stylesheets, images and javascripts. That will make sure you are viewing the page exactly as it currently exists.

The problem seems to be a typeface and size problem. The text appears smaller than it appeared before, and it seems to be in the wrong typeface.

Font sizes are usually specified in four ways:, percentages(%), pixels(px), points(pt) and em. Em means 100% of the width of a letter 'M' in the current font.

If font sizes are specified in percentages, the percentages are based on whatever the font size would be used by default for that text.

Browsers have what are called "default fonts". Those fonts are used if the page doesn't specify fonts. These are typically 16pt for serif fonts or 13pt for monospace fonts.

If you load a webpage and all of the fonts are specified as percentages, those percentages are based on your browser's default font.

So if your default font size was 16pt and the web page specified that a font size for a paragraph should be 150%, the font size for said paragraph would be 24pt. And if there was some text inside of that paragraph that had a specified font size of 50%, that text's font size would be 12pt.

If your default font size was 16pt, but the web page specified that a font size for a paragraph should be 12pt, the font size for said paragraph would be 12pt. And if there was some text inside of that paragraph that had a specified font size of 150%, that 150% would be based on the specified font size for the paragraph it's inside of, and not based on the font your browser would use by default. That text's size would be 18pt.

Specifying in percentages works best if the site developer is trying to make a site work well on many different sizes of screen. Specifying in em usually works as well, but is not as consistent.

Specifying in pixels only works okay if the site developer knows exactly what size screen will be used to view the site. A 12px font may look good on a low-resolution screen, but will look very bad on a higher-resolution screen.

Specifying in points doesn't work well, because different platforms handle points differently. On a Mac, pixels = points. A 16 point font is 16 pixels tall. A 14 point font is 14 pixels tall. On Windows, a 16 point font may be 18 pixels tall, or a 14 point font may be 16 pixels tall.

The fonts specified in the stylesheet on this site are disorganized. Some are specified in pt, some are specified in px, and some are specified in %. That can make things display significantly different in different browsers.

Another problem is that the HTML generated by these forums is not proper HTML. There are errors in the coding which can cause problems in the way different browsers determine how a page should be laid out. The HTML for this page may be checked using the W3C HTML Validator: Page disrupting link wrapped by lau

Some of the CSS used in the stylesheets is not proper CSS, either. The CSS for this page can be checked using the W3C CSS Validator: Page disrupting link wrapped by lau

One of the CSS problems on this site could be fixed by moving the Internet-Explorer-specific CSS properties(the ones starting with scrollbar-) to another stylesheet, and then using Internet Explorer conditional comments to make sure that only Internet Explorer loads that additional stylesheet. This could be done by moving those styles to a file named styleIE.css, and replacing this line at the top of the page: with this:

Alex is now doing more than changing the fonts.

STOP MAKING THINGS BRIGHT WHITE!! !!

hi, alex.

i'm using chrome beta for mac, os X 10.5.8, macbook white (intel).

are you saying to hunt thru the wikipedia article for the user agent string? or was clicking on "user agent string" (on the site where your link goes) supposed to actually give me that?

anyway, on chrome (and justa few minutes ago, on the latest version of safari) it all looks normal to me. the font *may* be smaller (not sure, i've only used wp much in the last month or so).

definitely sans-serif.

it's exactly the same on both my browsers.

for several days now, i've had a different problem with wp. in chrome, it takes so long to open a page most of the time that either chrome times out or i give up. console tells me something about "mach lookup denied" in chrome (sorry, i don't find it atm or i'd quote it exactly).

didn't check console from safari because i thought it was chrome's fault until i just tried to access wp in safari and had the same slowness on pretty much ever page.

and that's accessing from anywhere: a link in my mail, browser bookmark, or the web.

hope this helps some.

dont worry if you're using chrome and safari those are my main browsers. the size can be increased. i will do that tomorrow. the slowness is something i'm trying to fix.

Well... in order to get your text back to a reasonable size, you can override the WP styles by supplying your own specifications.

Personally, I was used to the old stuff, which was almost readable, without glasses, on a monitor that was big enough so that its pixel dimensions were large enough for me to see.

At least I knew when text was disrupting the page layout, as everything was defined in pixels, and wasn't being juggled about, so what disrupted the page layout today, wasn't suddenly not doing so, the next day.

Anyway... as a start, for those using Firefox (or SeaMonkey) under Linux...

1. Go to your "chrome" directory. (*)
2. If "userContent.css" does not exist yet, copy userChrome-example.css to it. E.g.
   Code:
   cp -a userChrome{-example,}.css
3. Tack on a line to set the font size in post bodies:
   Code:
   .postbody { font-size : 13px ! important }
4. Restart your browser.

I think 13pt was the original text size. I'm not sure if the "!important" tag is necessary.

(*) You will find your "chrome" directory as ~/.mozilla/USERNAME/SOMEGARBLE/chrome for SeaMonkey, and ~/.mozilla/firefox/MOREGARBLE/chrome for Firefox.

For Microsoft Mozilla users, the chrome directory is buried somewhere else, and I can't offhand recall where. The instructions are pretty much the same as above.

For other browsers - there should be some way of doing the same sort of thing, but you'll have to dig out where the local CSS overrides are lurking.

PS. "chrome" in the above refers to the directory used (honestly) in Mozilla for "Showy features added to attract users but contributing little or nothing to the power of a system". Naturally, that couldn't mean the browser and/or OS from Google.

Lau, I found the directory on Vista:

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\chrome

There was no existing file with the name you gave, so I created one: userContent.css

With the contents: .postbody { font-size : 14px ! important }

To test it I'd reset WP back to standard font sizes so my Ctrl + wasn't messing with anything.
I tried font size 13 initially but it didn't seem to do anything. Tried setting it to 14 but still no change.
I've closed Firefox and reopened it a couple of times but it doesn't seem to pick up this file or settings.
I'll try a reboot in a few minutes time.

Not sure what to do now. Ctrl + works, well sort of. It makes the text large enough to read in the messages but it seems to be very hit and miss. Some text is left untouched and is too small to read such as the text under the avatars and the date / times of messages and other text is blown up to silly size such as the main index page which is now very long and takes a lot of scrolling with the mouse wheel to get to the bottom.

Hmmmmm.

Mozilla has a page that lists the location of the Firefox Profiles folder for several different platforms. Inside the profiles folder there's a folder named chrome, and inside of that, if you save a plain text file named userContent.css the styles in the file will influence the way pages display.

I believe the old typeface was Verdana.

I saved this in my userContent.css file and then restarted Firefox:

!important is important. When used in CSS it prevents later style declarations from stylizing the specified element(or elements contained within) in ways that are contrary to the style you're specifying in the current declaration. The styles from the userContent.css are applied last, so they tend to be the dominant styles, but they only apply to the elements themselves and not to elements contained within those elements. Specifying !important when declaring a font indicates "Not only do I want this element to use this font, but I want all elements within this element to also use this font, regardless of what any other styles may say."

It's also good to include the part that says @-moz-document domain(wrongplanet.net) because it limits the style to pages from this site. Without it, the code would change the way that posts are displayed at some other forum sites.

Last edited by matt on 27 Dec 2009, 7:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks Matt!

That worked perfectly! WP now looks like it used to do. Excellent.

The Chrome folder that I needed to put the file into (on Vista) was:
C:\Users\name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\GOBBLEDEGOOK.default\chrome

Thanks again!

[The "GOBBLEDEGOOK" bit was added by lau, as the directory name will vary, and Mozilla intend it to do so, as a security precaution]

I've changed the font size for posts to 14 .

And... thanks matt, for a much cleaner way to make the CSS code apply only to WP. I'm in the process of digging out a cached version of the stylesheet, from any of my machines that haven't been zapped by the new copy yet.

I have made a minor change - by digging back through old, cached CSS data, I think I may have the original font family datum:

Other than that single line, the above is the same as your version.

Yes, Wrong Planet looks more normal now (after green parts had gone white) in my Safari browser:

and in my Firefox browser it looks quite normal :
even my 'Internet Explorer 5.2 for Mac' browser can handle Wrong Planet and it looks quite normal :
Although I have to get used to the new fonts used.

When a stylesheet lists several typefaces in a font-family declaration, the browser will stylize the element using the first available typeface from the list. If none of the listed typefaces are available the declaration is not applied.

For people using computers without verdana typefaces installed, your modified code may make things look more similar to the way they used to.

For anyone using a computer with the verdana typeface installed, using either the CSS I posted or the modified CSS you posted should make pages display in exactly the same way.

So WP being slow isn't my computer? I thought it was my internet connection but every other site I visit is fast. I checked here and saw this topic and read some issues I've had which is the blue/green areas being white (text has been fine no issues with that) but either A) Not loading or now B) 5+min-10min to load one page. I hope you can get the slowness fixed soon. I love surfing WP and having it be slow is a disappointment LOL! BTW hope you had a good Christmas Alex and Happy New Year. Hope WP is back in tip top form soon.