results of IE default text size survey

by Bennett Haselton <bennett(at)peacefire.org>

 Date:  Sun, 08 Jul 2001 03:00:02 -0700
 To:  hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
  todo: View Thread, Original
On 6/30 I asked users to let me know the default text size on their IE 5.x 
installation (under View->Text Size), to try and determine whether the 
setting of "Smallest" on my machine was a weird fluke, or a common 
configuration (the "Smallest" setting makes text on many sites look spidery 
and almost unreadable).

Results: I got 10 responses, with 8 users reporting "Medium" as the 
default, and 2 users with the size set to "Smaller", and no users reporting 
any other text size setting.  One of the users with the "Smaller" setting 
was running Win2K, and the other was running Win98.  For some reason, 
although I heard from users running Win98 and Win2K nobody who responded to 
the survey was running Windows ME, which is what I'm using, and which may 
be the source of the problem.  (If you're running Windows ME and you're 
reading this, please let me know off-list what your default text size is, 
even if you didn't respond to the original survey.)

Garretty Hrncir <HrncirG(at)jacksonlewis.com> told me about a Microsoft 
bulletin which said that if you change the default font size in IE to 
something other than "Medium" and then read an HTML email message in 
Outlook 2000, the IE text size will revert back to "Medium".  I've 
discovered something similar: if I change my IE default text size to 
something other than "Smallest" and close IE, and I open an HTML email 
message in Eudora 5.x (with "Use Microsoft's Viewer" selected under Viewing 
Mail options), then the next time I open IE, the default text size will be 
set back to "Smallest"!

Thanks to everyone for your help -- hope this summary information is 
useful.

	-Bennett

bennett(at)peacefire.org     http://www.peacefire.org
(425) 649 9024

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