The average size of internet typeface and my ability to read small words are both decreasing at a significant rate. Lately I’ve had to use browser zoom functions to take a closer look at the text.
Firefox (my usual browser choice)’s zoom is often a bit rubbish as words overflow into areas where they become unreadable. Opera and IE are way ahead of the game, using a more natural zoom that magnifies the whole visible page including images, rather than just the text.
While Opera used to be my browser of choice, it is now so unstable that it crashes randomly within 30 minutes, losing whatever page I was reading. So, I grudgingly flicked my default browser over to Windows Internet Explorer last week. I’m not sure I have ever used IE as default in the past - maybe just for a couple of years in the late 90s after Netscape Navigator went out of fashion. And I actually would be really happy with IE this time around but for one annoying bug…
While I was updating the Treasure London website, I noticed that the links didn’t line up with the text. The text would appear in the right place, but you need to click slightly to the right of where you’d expect to get the appropriate link. It works fine in Opera and Firefox, but there was this weird problem only in IE. I spent 2 hours trying to fix what I thought was my problem - and I’ve discovered that it’s a bug in my copy of IE7 with Windows Vista. Setting the zoom in IE to 110%-125% (as I often do) means the text on the right of each page will no longer line up with ‘itself’. If you double click a word to highlight it, you’ll notice a small but significant offset between the text and the highlight (where the link is). I kept trying to fix it (and am still interested in a solution) but in the end I realised that the same problem appears on every website - including Microsoft’s own help pages - when magnified in IE.
I’m surprised there isn’t more information about this IE7 bug floating around on Google (though it’s similar to an earlier ‘creeping text’ bug)… although it’s not too frustrating if you remember to point your mouse a cm to the right. As a web designer, though, I want everyone to experience the website as I intended. I’ve spent time checking and fixing our website for different browsers on different machines. Yet Microsoft have designed a flaw so embedded in their browser that it’s impossible for me to correct.
As you may have guessed, I’m in the process of improving the Treasure London website. 
Nothing major, but I’ll let you know when it’s done.
Ronald
