Why does my site look small in firefox

firefox small view

[shumboom]

Newbie CSS person here. Im sure this problem is pretty basic but cant work it out. Basically my php generated page appears about 50% of normal size in FF3 including all images. Its fine in IE.

What makes it weirder is that if I cut and paste the source of the firefox page and save it as an html page it all appears the right size. So now Im not sure if this is php,css,html or firefox related. I will post the relevant code if its required.

Thanks,Shumit

[poppyrich]

Make sure you have FF set to the "as designed" size in it's Text Zoom (or, in FF3 it could also be the Zoom feature) by pressing Ctrl+O.

I once spent three hours trying to figure out why my page was looking smaller in FF than IE because of that.

Please respond if that was the problem. I'm curious.

[shumboom]

OMG ! That was it. Took me about 3 hours too. Many thanks.

[poppyrich]

It's a poorly designed interface that doesn't tell you and tell you prominently what zoom level is being applied. What could be more fundamental to know than that?
(Sorry, had to get on the soapbox. Pet peeve.)

[vincevincevince]

poppyrich - I don't think zoom levels matter any more. They are irrelevant now we have full page zoom rather than just text zoom. If you are zoomed in, the site is the same size is just uses more of your screen. (Paradigm shift I suspect)

[tangor]

I personally like the zoom features. Eyes aren't as good as they used to be... and too many web masters overdo the "small print." In recent years my page coding has simplified because of this feature. I don't worry so much about how it looks... the user can boost/reduce to their heart's content. :)

[poppyrich]

@vince and tangor

You don't want to get me started on this but....

I'm all for zoom features - all I ask is that the browser tell me, the user, what level we're at. Especially if you're going to make the setting "sticky" behind my back with no opportunity to make it otherwise as FF3 does.

It's also a question of respecting and trusting the designer's initial intentions. Pages are always created for 100% (Ctrl+0).

One very bad thing about the "Adaptive" zoom in FF3 and IE8Beta is that it will very often create horizontal scrollbars - content zooms out of view to the right. And the only way for a designer to avoid this is to restrict themselves to a "fluid" (or is it "liquid" ?) layout that scrunches content together within the viewport as the zoom level goes up.

Lastly, I've been monitoring IE8 pretty closely, and many people who have gotten used to boosting their system DPI to 120 for larger fonts, which, prior to IE8 gave them a larger base Text Size without enlarging images, are bothered by IE8's EVERYTHING zooms approach.

[poppyrich]

@poppyrich

You wrote:

Especially if you're going to make the setting "sticky" behind my back with no opportunity to make it otherwise as FF3 does.

Wrong, poppy.

In FF3's about:config file there is a setting -
browser.zoom.siteSpecific
which can be set to false, and then the full "page" zoom will no longer stick to the domain.

(Do think it was a usability mistake to make sticky the default.)

There are other zoom settings as well but without a bit of experimentation, I don't know if you can force a perpetual state of 100% (Ctrl+0) so as to prevent what happened to shumboom in his initial complaint.

To be continued.

[tangor]

In my FF experience the zoom is remembered for each site which has be "zoomed" and not for any new sites. I have to ZOOM those pesky buggers each time I get to a small font site! And unless the site has something of real interest I never visit them again.

[tangor]

@poppyrich

You are correct that FF SHOULD WARN whether a zoom in/out is in place. Sorry for the quick reply without revisiting the original post.

[poppyrich]

Thanks for the input tangor.
Web sites are for the most part created by (relatively) very young people who have no age-related vision issues like "tired eyes" or "aging eyes" (presbyopia). And they are using, for the most part, very large screens. (Sizes have a tendency to conform to the size of monitor the designer uses the most, don't you think? Human nature. Yes, good professionals test at varying resolutions and monitor sizes but which one wins out as "optimal"? Willing to bet in most cases it's the oversized desktop screen.

It's a bigger issue than most web authors realize.