Text Resizing in Your Browser - A Visual Guide

A complete beginner's guide on how to resize text. Please feel free to embed this video on any accessibility statement/help page on your site if it will help your users

FULL TRANSCRIPT
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Transcript for How to Resize Text video

If you are finding it difficult to read some text when viewing a web site you can resize the text up and down to suit your needs. However, by default web browsers - for example Internet Explorer and Firefox - do not make it obvious that you can do this; effectively they hide these useful controls.

Using Internet Explorer, otherwise known as IE, you can change the font size by selecting the View menu item and then selecting the Text Size option - you have 5 size settings to pick from. This is useful to know and once you select this setting, it is remembered for all web sites that you visit.

A better option is to place a text resize control permanently on your toolbar. To do this, press your right mouse button on the toolbar area to bring up the contextual menu and choose 'Customize'. A list of available toolbar buttons appears on the left. Scroll down to the Text icon and then select 'Add'. You can also change the display of the icons while you're hear, just in case you find the toolbar icons a little small too. Once you hit the close button, you'll see a Text Size control there, making it much easier to change the size.

If you are using IE 7, the process is much the same - right click on the toolbar, but you need to select 'Customize Command Bar' then 'Add or Remove Commands'

In Firefox, you can increase the font size in a similar way to Internet Explorer. Unlike IE, you are not limited to 5 sizes (that being two notches up and two notches down from the default).

Unfortunately Firefox does not provide a toolbar icon for text resizing, even if you choose to customise. However, Patrick Lauke from the University of Salford has created an extension that creates a set of buttons that you can add to your toolbar. Simply go to the Firefox Extensions page and search for the 'Text Size Toolbar', or go to tinyurl.com/2ztudx. Once you've installed the extension and restarted Firefox, right click on your toolbar and choose customise. There you will find the resize buttons which you can drag and drop on to your toolbar.

There are other ways that you can change text size on a web page. If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, simply hold down the CTRL key - or the command key if you are a Mac user - and move the scroll wheel up and down. For Firefox users, hold down the CTRL key and press the plus (+) and minus (-) keys. Finally, if you are using Internet Explorer 7, you can hold down the CTRL key and press the plus or minus keys which will zoom the whole page in and out of view.

Ends

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• ie
• firefox
• text
• resize
• tutorial
• accessibility

[rdcL]

ctrl+scroll wheel

np.

[Cass0emoheart]

Thanks for this. My text was soo tiny and I didn't know how I did it.

[zz4r]

why would they want to hide to ability to change the text size lol

[mohio23]

@rdcL looooooooooooooooooooooooooooo­ool thnk's biggest short cut

[tgrx85]

@rdcL lol TLDW too long didnt watch

[ThePatriotSL]

Hi, In my YT mail page the email right hand side border is out of the page and it is difficult to write mail. How do you readjust this so that the right hand side border is within the page..

Thanks

[TheDeathCrasher]

@rdcL Thank you :D

[7ap0ut]

@rdcL LOL THANK YOU

[knockerhead6]

holy fuck tysm!!!!

[AgentWLLL]

thanks man you really helped me out

[ROFLthatsme]

my internet bar at the top where you type in websites and stuff keeps dissapering when i move my mouse away from it what do i do?