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NLS: That All May Read

About Style Sheets

On the NLS site, the color of text, whether it is the body of a paragraph or the heading of the paragraph, is controlled with a "style sheet". Here are steps to disable style sheets attached to any web document, not only the NLS style sheet, and replace them with your choice of font face, size and color. The labels and sequences are from Netscape Navigator 7.1 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.1.

Netscape Navigator

Adjust Font Size Quickly

In Windows systems, keyboard shortcuts are available to increase or decrease font size. The combination of <Ctrl> and the number pad plus key will increase font size. The combination of <Ctrl> and the number pad minus key will decrease font size.

Changing the Default Fonts

Normally, web pages are displayed in the default font set by your browser or in a font chosen by the web pages' authors.

To change the default fonts:

1. Open the Edit menu and choose Preferences.
2. Under the Appearance category, choose Fonts. (If no options are visible in this category, double-click Appearance to expand the list.)
3. From the "Fonts for" drop-down list, choose a character set. For instance, to set default fonts for the Western (roman) character set, choose "Western."
4. Select whether proportional text should be serif (like Times Roman) or sans-serif (like Arial). Then specify the font size you want for proportional text.
5. If an appropriate font is available for your language character set, select fonts for Serif, Sans-Serif, Cursive, Fantasy, and Monospace. You can also specify what font size you want for monospace text.
6. Specify whether the default font should be serif or sans serif.
7. Select a fixed-width font and size. Certain types of text, such as equations and formulas, are displayed in a fixed-width font.

Many web page authors choose their own fonts and font sizes. To allow fonts other than the ones specified in your preferences, check "Allow documents to use other fonts."

To adjust the readability of fonts, select from the drop-down list the dots per inch (dpi) for displaying web pages. Select "Other" to open the Calibrate Resolution dialog box, which allows you to calibrate your resolution by measuring how long a line appears on your screen. Increased screen resolution may will improve text readability on some screens.

Internet Explorer

Adjust Font Size Quickly

You can adjust the text size using Windows menu choices. Use the following sequence to get to the list of text size choices. Keyboard controls are in square brackets. View[<alt>v] Text Size [<alt>x].

A dialog box opens with five choices

• smallest [<alt>a]
• smaller [<alt>s]
• medium [<alt>m]
• larger [<alt>l]
• largest [<alt>g]

On most systems, medium will approximate the print size of 12-points.

Changing the Default Fonts

1. Click or select Tools [<alt>t] and then Internet Options [<alt>o]
2. Click or select Accessibility [<alt>e]
3. Put checks in the boxes to ignore colors, font styles, and font sizes. Click OK.
4. Click or select Colors [<alt>o] to set the color of text and background. The choice of Windows default will make text black on a white background. You can pick colors for links unvisited and links visited. Click ok after you make your choices.
5. Click/select fonts to select the font face you prefer. Click ok. Font size is limited to the five settings under View > Text Size.
6. Click ok to exit the Internet Options dialog box.

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Posted on 2011-01-10