29528 - Using mozilla on Windows machines using Large fonts = jacked up layout

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Themes, defect, P3)

Description

[skim]

If you try using the mozilla browser on a Windows machine that uses Large Fonts 
setting in Control Panel\Display\Settings, the layout is all jacked up.  Nothing 
fits properly in the windows for things such as Edit\Preferences, or any of the 
message boxes/wizards that guide you to create mail boxes, etc.  In fact, some 
of the text is hidden because the dialog boxes aren't big enough to accomodate 
the larger fonts.

Comment 1

[troy]

Not a layout issue. Changing component to XP Apps

Comment 2

[Paul MacQuiddy]

John, can you take a look at this and see what the problem is? Thanks.

Comment 3

[Sean Richardson]

Confirmed with the 2000-03-01-08-M15 nightly binary on WinNT 4.0 - parts of
some dialogs, including some panels in the Preferences window, are quite 
unusable. 

The general problem of sizing UI text appropriately is the subject of a few
bugs already and has been discussed in the newsgroups, but I was not expecting
any text in mozilla to respond to this setting when there is a Font Scaling
section in the Edit>Preferences>Appearance>Fonts panel, and the base font size
for everything in the UI is defined near the top of 
/bin/chrome/global/skin/default/global.css as 3mm.

At least entering "set GECKO_FONT_SIZE_FACTOR=1.5" before running mozilla.exe
has no additional effect on Win32 -- it wouldn't surprise me if the 
"Large fonts" setting (Start>Settings>Control Panel>Display>Settings) is 
being factored in (literally) in the same place in the code that that
environment variable is factored in on *NIX.

Comment 4

[John Morrison]

*** Bug 34190 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[John Morrison]

*** Bug 34190 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[John Morrison]

*** Bug 34190 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[verah (gone)]

Reassigning as per Don

Comment 8

[don]

Move to M21 target milestone.

Comment 9

[kevin arnold]

I see the same problem here.

I'm running with large fonts with a 1600x1200 resolution.  I use large fonts
because small fonts is unreadable at that resolution.  It seems like the
comments here are focusing on resizing the font to fit the window, but wouldn't
the proper response be to resize the window to fit the font?

This seems to be the same problem that web developers face when trying to layout
a page with stylesheets.  They do not know what font size the user agent is
using as a default, so they must either override that font size or accommodate
it.  If you override the font setting, then you can alienate users who must have
a large font setting due to problems with their vision.  The answer is to base
all of the pages demensions on the font size.  There is a nice article about
this at http://webreview.com/pub/98/06/26/webfonts/index.html.

I for one know that I would be quite annoyed if the font in my preferences
dialog was too small to read without squinting.

Comment 10

[Moses Lei]

I'm experiencing the same problem on build 2000083111. The content of certain 
preferences panels go off the screen, without even a scroll bar to get to it. 
Some panels will fit on modern but not classic, some vice versa, and some on 
neither.

I think this is a really important bug to fix because more and more people are 
using large fonts on high resolutions. I agree with Kevin Arnold on that the 
window should be resized to accomodate the text, not the text resized to 
accomodate the window.

Using large fonts on Windows 98 SE at 1152x864.

Comment 11

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

we won't be supporting this any time soon.

Comment 12

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

I think that's ridiculous.  This is a serious bug.  Some people who don't have 

perfect vision use large fonts because it makes everything easier to read.  (My 

dad did before he started using Linux.)  Adding access keyword.



Future perhaps, but please don't LATER.  Isn't LATER deprecated anyway?

Comment 13

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

David, Netscape 4.x never supported this, and we can't be expected to either. 
Barring SVG icons, I don't pick that this will be fixed any time soon in our 
skins. 

helpwanted, future, =>hangas. 

Comment 14

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

How did large fonts not work in 4.x?  4.x seems (based on a quick test of 
changing windows theme) to have used font sizes fixed in pt, and probably dialog 
dimensions fixed in pt as well, so everything grew in proportion.

I wouldn't suggest that Mozilla use dialogs fixed in pt, since they may be 
dependant on the skin, which may depend on the user's system fonts.  However, 
couldn't you use em sized dialogs?  Or dialogs that expand based on their 
contents (difficult in some ways, but perhaps worthwhile)?  This is more 
difficult in Mozilla, but that's one of the costs of XPToolkit and skinnability.

The account manager, for example, is extremely confusing with large fonts (and 
that's on Linux, where I have my screen resolution set to the correct 126dpi).

Comment 15

[Moses Lei]

I just noticed that this is a problem if you use 100dpi X fonts, too. Is there a
separate bug for that (assuming this is only for Windows)?

Comment 16

[Paul Chen]

nav triage team:

Although really nice to have, don't think we'll get to it for beta1. Marking 
nsbeta1-

Comment 17

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

*** Bug 67804 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[hangas]

Moving to Themes

Comment 19

[hangas]

Removing minus from nsbeta1

Comment 20

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

This was fixed a long time ago.  If there are any specific issues you still see
using Large fonts, please file individual bugs.

Comment 21

[Patty Mac]

marking verified on windows 98 (2001-04-25-09-Mtrunk).

Comment 22

[Kai Lahmann (is there, where MNG is)]

*** Bug 131670 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***