As you surf the Internet, you may want to vary the size of text on web pages to accommodate your specific needs. Considerations include your screen size, screen resolution, and visual accuity. Here are some options and restrictions about which you should be aware.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allow web developers to create web pages with relative text sizes, which then gives the user the ability to increase or decrease text as they wish. Some web designers will offer links that allow the user to change the size of the text. For example, Wired.com offers their site in four different text sizes (see the letter A presented in four sizes on the right side near the top.) This option of changing text size will only apply to that particular site, but will be set for all pages within that site.
If the web developer has not created this type of option for different text sizes, you can explicitly change the text size through your browser. To do this within Internet Explorer, click the View menu command and select Text Size. You can select the setting that you want from five options.(The browser will be on Medium by default.) The change will happen immediately and will remain in effect for all web sites you view until you change the setting again. Examples of text size changes can be seen in the three examples below.
Be aware that browser settings will not always change the text size. If the web site was developed using static or absolute text sizes instead of dynamic or relative sizes, then the text will not increase or decrease in size when you change View options. Also, the size of text within images cannot be changed. Notice in the examples above that the word Wisconsin in the header does not change in size. This is due to the fact that the header is an image.