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RubberToes

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me thinks it has more to do with his browser -

 

the actual size measured is 741 pixels on his image as shown.

the actual page is 700 pixels.

 

I tried shrinking the page to about 3" wide and it did not overlap -

 

I use MS IE here at home - several at work - Mozilla messes up my own pages by squishing them more narrow than they should be.

Edited by CompuCash
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<_< You need to change your screen resolution to something higher than 640x480!

 

Actually, my screen resolution is 1280 x 854 on my laptop and 1600 x 1200 on my desktop computer.

 

I didn't think it was resolution -

 

what is your browser?

 

what if you open the brower window a bit more - doesn't have to be full screen -

 

edit -

 

AHA! -- I'm looking at the text and how big it is - check the View menu item and make sure you are at normal or medium (or what ever your browser uses for standard size text)...

Edited by CompuCash
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I have also seen this on some computers. The reason is that the font used in the dropdown list for the country names is too big. Although the width of the table containing the search form is specified as 200 pixels, the dropdown list becomes wider than that because of some long country names and this causes the gray part of the page to be around 250 pixels wide or even wider. This is apparently not easy to fix by the user because (at least in IE) changing the text size doesn't seem to affect the font used in the dropdown list. The solution would be better web design. For a quick fix, the long country names could be shortened or a stylesheet could be applied to the form elements, or the entire page (the white area) could be made 100 pixels wider so that bigger fonts can fit, too.

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Thanks, as77, for your thoughts. I think you are correct that the long country names in the search box are to blame for the effect.

 

For what it's worth, I am using IE6 with the font size set at "Smaller," and I have expanded the size of the window without success. However, based on as77's comments, I checked my desktop settings and noted that I am using the "large fonts" setting under Properties | Settings |Advanced in Windows. So, I switched it to "Normal" and lo and behold, the search box is correctly sized.

 

The only problem is that I can no longer clearly see the menus, dropdowns, and other choices presented in computer dialogs. (Not to mention that the text in this box as I type is so tiny I can barely focus on it.)

 

So, I guess I'll go back to "Large Fonts" and put up with the overlapping text. Someday the programmers will realize that not everyone has 25-year-old eyes.

 

Thanks again everyone for helping me figure this out.

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The only problem is that I can no longer clearly see the menus, dropdowns, and other choices presented in computer dialogs. (Not to mention that the text in this box as I type is so tiny I can barely focus on it.

Maybe one of these articles can help you:

 

Fixing Windows font sizing. Sort of.

 

A better solution is hidden more deeply. Right-click on the desktop and select properties. But go to settings, advanced, and under general, you'll find a DPI setting. Since the default is 96 DPI and this screen's resolution is about 50% larger than I would like, I switched to a custom setting and scaled to 150%, which gives 144 DPI.

Adjusting Scale for Higher DPI Screens

 

Cornix

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I found that changing the DPI for the display is not a universal solution. Whatever you do, some web pages and some programs are bound to appear messed up, especially those where pixel sizes are hardcoded (like on gc.com). Finally, I have resorted to setting my screen resolution to 1024x768, even though the monitor could display resolutions up to 1600x1200. But when I set the resolution to 1024x768, font sizes to normal and DPI to the default 96, everything everywhere is displayed correctly.

 

gc.com illustrates why using hardcoded pixel sizes on web pages is a bad idea.

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I found that changing the DPI for the display is not a universal solution. Whatever you do, some web pages and some programs are bound to appear messed up, especially those where pixel sizes are hardcoded (like on gc.com). Finally, I have resorted to setting my screen resolution to 1024x768, even though the monitor could display resolutions up to 1600x1200. But when I set the resolution to 1024x768, font sizes to normal and DPI to the default 96, everything everywhere is displayed correctly.

 

gc.com illustrates why using hardcoded pixel sizes on web pages is a bad idea.

This was my next suggestion -

 

1600x1200 is VERY small unless you have a very large display -

 

I use 1280x1024 as a ballance between decent real estate on the desktop and size of text.

 

I work with severl people who use 16x12 on 19" monitors (flat panels) and I just can't read text because it is so small.

 

I had forgotten about the large text settings - you image was a clue that the text was big. Thought it was just the text in the browser. Large text messes up a lot of things in windows.

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A couple of months ago, PC World did a very short piece on "Good vs. Bad Tech Implementations". One of the examples they gave had to do with how browsers adjust the page when using font sizes other than the default. They compared IE with Opera, and Opera's resizing was much smarter; it resized the images too so that the layout of the page was unaffected by the larger fonts. You might want to check out Opera to see if handles your font sizing issue more intelligently than IE.

 

<_< Elias

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It is definitely a font size issue.

 

Another good web browser is Mozilla's FireFox web browser. It's small and fast (and uses the Gecko rendering software engine).

 

Unfortunately MS-Internet Explorer has become the oldest, most out of date browser because Microsoft hasn't done any real updates for a long time, with no plans to update it until the next version of Windows.

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Just look at the browser image. Does the page display correctly? No. Conclusion: the web design is bad.

 

Most modern guides on web design will tell you that 1. using tables for layout is bad and obsolete, 2. specifying absolute pixel sizes is bad practice. Now the gc.com main page is nothing but a bunch of nested tables with hardcoded pixel sizes throughout.

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IE Version 6.0.2900, SP2

Screen Resolution 1024x768

 

Interesting that I don't see those same overlaps.

 

It's not font size in Internet Explorer that's causing the overlap, it's the DPI setting for system fonts as explained in previous posts. (See Control Panel | Display | Settings | Advanced |General.)

 

Because of the graphics work I do, I have to have screen resolution at 1600 x 1200. But then I can't see the 96 DPI system font text which Windows displays in things like desktop icons and dropdown menus. So, I use the option to bump the DPI up to 120, and, voila, I can read again.

 

Now, when Internet Explorer displays a form, it uses that font that is 125% of normal size for the items that populate the drop down boxes. The programmers who assembled the page were likely using the 96 DPI fonts when they tested and everything looked fine.

 

Thanks to the suggestions from the folks here, I now know what the problem is and why it's occuring. Unless the programmers want to test using the 120 DPI system fonts and adjust the size of the table accordingly, I'm just going to have to live with the overlap.

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I have had this issue before. It occured when I installed a program with legacy components and it also contained fonts that had identical names to those that already existed within the system. I would have fixed it specifically except that I had so many other issues that I reinstalled the OS from scratch.

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