Dell E1705/Internet Explorer Incompatibility

The laptop has a wide 17-inch screen, and I find, using just about any resolution setting, that IE6 and IE7 Beta 3 do not display Web pages properly. Every page appears as if it is sized at about 150% of normal and thus its text and graphics have a stretched appearance.

The setting for Text Size on IE6 seems to be locked on "Smallest" and won't allow me to change it to anything else.

In developing web pages I use other browsers (Firefox, Netscape, Opera) for testing and they all present the pages (on any Web site) normally and pleasingly at just about any of the available screen resolutions.

What's up?

 

Hold down the control key when you are in internet explorer and scroll your mouse wheel up and down.

Does this do anything ?

 

The scroll wheel does nothing when the Ctrl key is pressed, but works OK without pressing Ctrl.

 

Normally the control key and scrolling changes the resolution of internet explorer

 

By the way, Matt, I have a graphic of comparison screen shots (IE6 v. Firefox) that I could email you, if you'd like.

 

no thanks lol I know what your saying. I'm not sure why your text size would be locked on smallest, medium is the default.

You say the issue is on IE6 and IE7, you should'nt be able to be running both of them so I assume you installed IE7 and then tried removing it and going back to 6 for a fix ?

 

That's correct. By the way, on Firefox one can press Ctrl+= to zoom in on a page, and Ctrl+- to zoom out. If that is supposed to be a feature available in IE6, then it doesn't work for me. I didn't try that in IE7 during the short time I had it installed.

 

Im not sure if its available in IE7 as I don't have it installed since it interferes with Visual Studio 2005 Web Developers Styles dialog, I think in IE the closest is the text size which is the Ctrl and mousewheel shortcut

 

IE7 has me worried, that I'll have to make a lot of adjustments to suit Microsoft's tastes. IE6 is bad enough. One thing, I'm making sure that all my pages pass the XHTML standards test. Maybe that's a step in the right direction to a global platform for developers. But maybe not.

 

IE7 is actually better than IE6 and conforms to the CSS standards a lot better, well better than IE6 did. It also fully supports x-pngs now which IE6 didn't properly. Making sure you pages are XHTML compliant with the W3C standard is a good idea but more important is making sure the most popular browser support them properly.

 

Excuse me, what are x-pngs? I work alone and don't hear all the buzz words.

 

When you say "locked" do you mean it will not allow you to change it OR you change it and it reverts back to small?

Do you have Outlook?

Steve

 

Actually I can change the setting (choose any of the size options) but to no effect.

 

Outlook and Outlook Express are installed on the computer but I never use them. I use Thunderbird for email. I am a Mozilla kind of guy.

 

This probably isn't it then, but you can give it a shot.

> solution 2
> In Outlook 2000 go to Tools/Options/Mail Format/Fonts/International
> Fonts, and for each font
> change the "Font Size" entry to your desired size.

Steve

 

x-pngs are a type of image pngs that support alpha blended transparency

 

Just got off the phone with Dell-Bangalore. You won't believe this: In order to adjust the text size on a Dell E1704 (and perhaps other models as well), you have to download and run a special "Dell IE Text Size Utility," or something to that effect. When you run it, you have the option of setting the text size to "Large" or "Normal." (The regular sizing options on IE6 remain inoperable.)

You would have to consult Dell to ever find this download. The operative file, R98539.EXE, should reside on your desktop so you can conveniently change the text size. Can you believe it?

As for x-pngs, I'm familiar with those files; I create them all the time . (The "x" prefix is new to me.) As I recall, the advantage of using a png on a web page is its transparency capabilities. Is that about right?

Thanks to all for your interest and suggestions.

Reno

 

Never heard of that but I believe it.....what will they think of next.

Steve