Increasing Font Size

PROBLEM: On computer monitors, some web pages with white lettering on black background are hard to read, however on WebTV, this looks good. Black lettering on white background is hard to read on Web TV, but computer users prefer this.

ANALYSIS: When people retain the default text font size on their browser, which is usually 10-point type size, the display of white letters on black or black letters on white may be hard to read. Even when we utilized a background pattern, if the text font size is too small, the letters can get lost in the background pattern. The web page itself doesn't decide what size of letters to print on your screen, you do, with your browser.

SOLUTION: The fix is to increase the font size that your browser uses to display text on your screen.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

1. Pull down the View Menu
2. Select the Font Menu
3. Select the Large or Larger selection.

Increasing Screen Space

PROBLEM: With so many tool bars and buttons, there isn't much room for the web page itself to display.

ANALYSIS: The software providers have tried to make their browser very easy to use. One way is to keep many available options on the screen all the time. The browser gets installed with all these tool bars turned on. They take up space whether you use them or not.

SOLUTION: The fix is to turn off some of the tool bars that you don't use. This will increase the space for displaying the web page. Also if you change your screen area via the display properties, you have have more viewing space.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

With version 3.0 or better, the trick is to click and hold the divider between the tool bars and the viewing window and drag it back up to the top of the screen. The tool bars will shrink and combine and compact themselves.

You can reduce the three tool bars into one tool bar, that still contains all the selections on it.

Of course "Maximizing" the window helps too. Under Windows, click the Maximize Icon in the upper right window frame to make sure the browser fills to whole screen.

Reload Pages Daily

When you set up your browser settings to make use of disk and memory caching your browser keeps copies of most frequently visited pages on your computer, instead of asking for them again and again over the net. This keeps net congestion down and speeds up your access to pages.

Therefore, you need to reload certain pages daily to get the latest information off of them. You will have to tell your browser to get a more recent copy of the page, when you come back the next day. Look for the "RELOAD" command of your browser and use it each day to get the latest Home, Topics, Link and Guest pages.

Printing White on Black

When trying to print out the pages on web sites that have white and yellow letters on the dark background, using some laser or color ink jet printers, will result in printed pages that are mostly white or mostly black. You can set your web browser up to print these pages by setting some printing options. You can tell your browser to treat the page as black text on white. Failing this, you can override the web page colors, by setting your own colors, and then viewing the page, and printing it.

1. Try Setting Print Options

Pull down the "FILE" menu, and click on "PAGE SETUP" . In "PAGE OPTIONS" check "BLACK TEXT" and "BLACK LINES", then click "OK". That's it! (You can leave these settings on all the time.)

Your browser may have slightly different menus and option names, but essentially you are looking to set the page printing options of the browser to override the page colors and print as black on white only. Most modern browser can do this.

2. Try Changing Your Colors

Pull down the "OPTIONS" menu and click on "GENERAL PREFERENCES". Select the "COLORS" page tab and choose a "TEXT COLOR" of BLACK and a "BACKGROUND COLOR" of "WHITE", then click on "ALWAYS USE MY COLORS, OVERIDING DOCUMENT" then "OK". (After printing, you need to go back to the "COLORS" dialog box and uncheck the "OVERRIDE" checkbox to see website colors properly again.)

Your browser may have slightly different menu names and options, but essentially you can override all page colors and set your own desired colors for background, text, links and such. You can setup a color set that prints well on your printer and turn these color settings on or off (override or not override) anytime you need to.

Don't forget to turn off override when you are done, or the web sites you visit will not display as intended.

3. Save the Text Somewhere Else

Another option is to "FILE" and "SAVE AS" the web page to a file on your system and then open the file in any word processing program, then just print it out from that program! This has the added advantage of being able to save it in another file format, but you do lose the images.