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encoding problem

Jack Summerfield [PersonRank 1]

Thursday, August 21, 2008
15 years ago2,647 views

I am getting tiny, unreadable font points in "fill-in boxes" when working with Google search. If I change from UTF-8 to Western European, everything is readable and as it should be. But the change will not lock-in, so that the next time I use a Google search page, the problem is back again.

I need some advice please.

Eugene, Oregon

Jack Summerfield [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

[follow-up, moved]

Google standardizes on the UTF-8 code on its web pages that are displayed. But for some reason, UTF-8 appears as a very tiny, tiny font on my computer (Vista 32 bit HP m7750n). How can I permanently change to the Western European code? It is readable, but it just won't lock-in. I'm happy, until I switch to another web page, and then it goes immediately back to UTF-8 again.

How does one lock-in the switch, or make the UTF-8 use a larger font permanently?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Which browser/ operating system are you using, and which font did you set as default in your browser?

Jack Summerfield [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Philipp, thanks very much for responding.

I use IE 7.0 on Vista Home Premium. On the Google home page, the boxes that contain the words "Google Search" and "I'm Feeling Lucky" always appear in small point font when encoding is set to UTF-8.....but are viewable as a more normal size when I set encoding to Western European. I just can't lock-in Western European.

Sometimes these boxes on other websites are so tiny, as to be nearly unreadable. I've set all font settings to large numbers, which affects everything except these boxes. These boxes seem to be unchangeable by any setting permanently. It even happened after I recently formatted.

Jack

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Jack, I know this may not be central to your problem, but would you consider switching to Firefox 3? ... and then see if the problem persists?
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Firefox also has a great feature that when you press Ctrl and + together, it will zoom into the page... and remember that zoom setting on a per-site basis (it's much more useful than just the increased font size IExplorer delivers).

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Your problem is not Google being displayed in UTF-8 – that's a good and expected behavior. Every document on the web has it's native encoding and browser should use this encoding while displaying it. That's good.

Your problem is a bad setting connected to font sizes in your browser. I don't know about IE, but in Firefox you configure default font sizes (and other font settings) SEPARATELY for different encodings. If the font size were changed for one encoding, but not the other it would give results similar to those described.

You should look into your settings. Resetting all settings or switching to other browser (there are many other reasons you should use Firefox) should also help.

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

A quick websearch suggests that the problem maybe also connected to missing or damaged fonts. Make sure you have installed all the main Windows fonts.

Jack Summerfield [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Thanks to both of you. I will follow-through with your suggestions and probably switch over to Firefox.

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