IE6 SP1 Text Size Doesn’t ‘Stick’ (IE6 SP1)

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Normally, setting text size in IE (View || Text Size) once is all you have to do. IE remembers this setting from session to session. This works just dandy on five of my systems. One the sixth–my wife’s (she can break ANYTHING)–this feature doesn’t work. Anyone have any ideas on the fix?

Thanks

Charles

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Does she by any chance have a scroll mouse on her computer? If so holding down the ctrl button and scolling forward makes the print smaller and scrolling back makes it larger.

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Yes, she has a logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo with scroll key. I’m aware of the CTL-Scroll option but she’s probably not so it’s unlikely she’s doing this to herself. And I KNOW I’m not doing it to myself when I’m on her machine doing maintenance and whatnot. )

That also doesn’t alter the fact that IE shouldn’t be unilaterally changing the setting.

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See the related post on Accessibility Options and make sure that does not apply.

The IE font size is stored in the registry here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerInternationalScripts3
IEFontSize=

The values are:

Smallest: 00 00 00 00
Smaller: 01 00 00 00
Medium: 02 00 00 00
Larger: 03 00 00 00
Largest: 04 00 00 00

However, the key number (3) may be country specific.

It would be strange for something to make a modification to the registry without her knowledge. Set the font size and verify the setting in the registry. When you notice the font size is different, see if the registry setting has been altered.
_______________-

Add: Jay has a very good point. You need to make sure she is not using the Ctrl button and mouse wheel to change the font size….

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Interesting! I just went to each of my systems and checked this registry key. I don’t have it on any of mine. There flat out ain’t an “IEFontSize” key period. At the moment, her machine is turned off and I’m already late, so I’ll check this tonight. Perhaps the solution is, if the key is present, to delete it. And if it is, I’ll set it manually through the registry and see what happens. Thanks for the lead.

Oh! Re: scroll mouse–see my reply on this to Jay.

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Interesting. Look in the other numbered files. This data has to be stored somewhere…. And IE usually uses the same registry keys across different OS’s…

Add: Also, use Edit | Find and look for the IEFontSize value somewhere else. I guess this could be a “Local Machine” setting also, but generally I would suspect it to be a user-specific setting.

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I did the search for IEFontSize and found two things. First, if you’ve never manually overridden the defaults, this key isn’t created. Second, it’s found in HKEY_USERS as well as HKEY_CURRENT_USER. I manually changed it in both places to “2” (medium size) and closed regedit as well as IE. Multiple closes and reopens of IE left the font size intact. She was busy with something, so I couldn’t reboot her box, but that’ll be the next test. Stay tooned, as they say….

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Yes, CURRENT_USER is just the “current” users data — so it would appear in both CURRENT_USER and USERS.

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If you Tools>Options>Accessibility Button (lower right) and put a check in the third box down, “Ignore font sizes specified on web pages” then when you scroll with a mouse or a touch pad on a laptop and hold down the Ctrl key, I don’t think you have to worry about the View menu or the registry location. You can scroll to the exact font size you want like a rheostat and it stays. If you see a different font size that is smaller or larger on a part of a page, and want to change it, you just scroll to where you want. Works well.

SMBP

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I don’t want to override style sheet font settings. But if the page designer didn’t specify a font size, then I want IE to take its normal course of action and display that page in the IE-specified way (via View || Text Size). Going the accessibility route is a permanent override to even style sheets. Occasionally, I have to do this to see the Discover Web pages because their designer insists that the type size he set via stylesheet is just wonderful (on his Mac). Unfortunately, it has a bad tendency to munge a lot of page layouts–especially those based on tables.

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>>First, if you’ve never manually overridden the defaults, this key isn’t created.

OK, if I take this at face value, then if your wife has NO IEFontSize value then she has NEVER overriden the defaults. THEN, you problem is NOT with IE control of the fonts but instead with the Web Page specifying specific fonts.

Think about it. If the value has never been created, then the problem exists OUTSIDE of IE’s control. Therefore, you are dealing with the web page developer’s desire to use a different font size. Your wife is not responsible and has no control over the fonts specified by the web designer…

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No, you misunderstood me. Or I wasn’t real clear, more likely. It’s on one of my machines (my testbed) that I saw the key had never been created because I’d never gotten around to overriding the defaults for font size and font style (proportional/monospaced). Her machine, however, had had these defaults overridden when I did the initial setup (it was her Xmas present, so setup wasn’t real long ago, and done after IE had been upgraded to V6 from the W2K install of V5.x).

One of the things I noticed in perusing the registry was that a whole host of font size keys existed under Outlook Express. All were IEFontSize. It appears (so far) that when I changed them via Regedit to MEDIUM (key value “2”), that the problem went away. We’ve done a few reboots and restarts of IE before and after the reboots and, as I say, so far the font size has “stuck” at the Medium setting (IE kept going to Smallest before).

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If the registry changes “stick” now, I am not sure why they did not do so before. Remember, OE is simply the built-in email client for IE — so any changes to font size in OE will result in font size changes in IE — they are forever linked.

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I realize that this is kind of out of date, but I just found the answer to the problem. If you are using MS Outlook you should read this link http:// http://support.microsoft.com/search/previe…b;en-us;Q242984 [/url] . If you are using Eudora as your email program, this also can cause the problem. You need to (in Eudora) go to Tools, options, Viewing mail, and uncheck use Microsoft’s viewer. Your font should stick from now on.

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Nice find, Jay! One never knows what defaults lurk in the apps of Microsoft.

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Excellent find! Thanks for the follow up.

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