Enlarging text is easy

By: DON EDRINGTON - For the North County Times | Saturday, July 24, 2004 11:23 PM PDT ∞

A frequently asked question is: "How can I make the tiny text that arrives on some e-mail large enough to read?" The easiest way is to do Ctrl+A (Select All) to highlight the text, and then click your Reply button. This will let you choose another font size. It will also let you choose a different font style and/or color, in case changing the text's contrast would improve its legibility.

Another frequent question: "How can I make the tiny text seen on some Web pages easier to read?" Well, my favorite way of handling this has always been to mouse-select the text and do Ctrl+C to COPY it, followed by using Ctrl+V to PASTE it into a blank word-processing document, whereupon the text can be edited in whatever way that seems most helpful.

A Windows tool for enlarging tiny text is the "Magnifier," which can be found at Start>Programs>Accessories>Accessibility. However, in addition to making everything twice as tall, it doubles the width of everything, which means both vertical and horizontal scrolling are required to follow the text.

Well, I was recently introduced to a new program that has a brand-new approach to controlling the text size encountered on Web pages. WebEyes not only makes the text larger, it literally redraws each character using "anti-aliasing" technology to achieve maximum legibility.

Furthermore, you can choose a "Read Like a Book" view that places the target text into a window that makes each line of lettering automatically wrap to the next line as it approaches the right edge of the window, thus eliminating the "left/right scrolling" normally required in an enlarged view. When your eye finally arrives at the lower-right corner of the "Book View" window, clicking a "Next Page" icon displays the following page in perfect sequence.

Another of the program's well-thought-out features is the enlargement of various types of forms that require the filling in of boxes with one's name, address and phone, etc. Vision-impaired users will see clearly and precisely what data they are submitting to an online company.

Normally, this column is restricted to reviews of various add-on utility programs that are available at no cost; however, I consider the $19.95 price of WebEyes to be a worthwhile investment for anyone with vision limitations.

More details can be found at www.webeyes.us, where a copy of the program can be downloaded for a 15-day free trial.

Speaking of no-cost utilities, Google now makes the image-management program Picassa freely available at www.google.com. One of the features of Picassa is its ability to scan your entire hard drive for all images and display them as a collage of "thumbnails." If you have ever lost track of a digital photo whose name you have forgotten, this feature alone makes the utility worth the download.

On another matter, my recent description of MSWord's "Clipboard Toolbar" generated stacks of e-mail, which space here doesn't allow me to answer ---- but answers can be found at www.pcdon.com, and calls are welcome at (949) 646-8615.