Great Western Coffee Shop

Is it just me or has the text size on the front index page suddenly grown in stature...... ???

It could be the "site style" in the top menu bar.

When you visit this and change the style (as you may well have done in the past), a cookie is set to ensure that style is remembered by your browser for subsequent visits. I'm not a great fan of setting cookies for "ever and a day"; as I recall I set it for a year or two then it expires and returns you to default.

My guess - EITHER you've clicked to change the style by mistake OR the cookie has expired. I suspect you can be back to what you want in a couple of clicks armed with that information  ;D

Thanks, Grahame.  I did try what you suggested but the text size on the front page is distinctly larger than that on other pages (such as individual subject index pages).  Anyway, don't worry about it as I can probably 'get a life' and live with it..... ;) :D :P

I have experienced apparently the same effect when I've occasionally tried to view the Coffee Shop forum on my mobile phone, rather than from my laptop.

Does that help?  :-\

Yup. Front page fonts are now larger when I view on Chrome for Android.

Hmmm .... and as the doctor would ask "how long has this been going on"?   

Nothing strikes me as obvious.  And can someone who's been seeing this confirm what you mean by "front page" - I have three entry points ...

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/frontpage1.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/frontpage2.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/frontpage3.jpg)

First is the main page for the Coffee Shop site, second the "please log in" page and third the main board lister for people who are logged in.   Does the problem effect all three,or just one (or two) of these?

(Note - I have scaled the screen captures down so they fit within the frame of the Coffee Shop even though they ARE the frame of the Coffee Shop!

Grahame, its the second and third ones for me.  I'm using a SAMSUNG tablet running ANDROID.

Appreciated ... do you know when this started happening?   A rough date?  I'm trying to work out if it's to do with some sort of change I may have made, or an upgrade to browsers;  potentially there's some slightly broken CSS code somewhere.   

I am meeting some others who visit the forum tomorrow (at the Melksham River and Food Festival - all welcome - nearest station - err - Melksham / 15 minute walk) and will have laptop an mobile internet there so I can look across a load of devices and see if I can see the problem ...

I first noticed it about 3-4 days ago (I think ???).

It's not happening in Firefox on my desktop - (but I can look at the html on that).

I looked on my tablet, and it didn't happen on my usual browser - some Asus/Android supplied one.
I started Chrome on that, and it did happen.
I switched back to the other browser, and now it happens there too!

It's column 2 that is affected, not column 3 or 4. In the html debug window, both inherit "font-size=mediium" from <tr> and <td> but the third and fourth columns then apply style="width:12ex" or width="22%"; I presume that modifies the text size.

Does that help?

That is enormously helpful, thank you.  I will take a look at it during a "quiet period" - needs a bit of concentration which I suspect I won't get during today.    Will add it to a couple of things I need to do during tonight - no promise of a solution, but a promise of a look-see-investigate!

I should have said, it's the Home (or index.php) page I was looking at there.

Yep, got that. But index.php generates an awful lot of pages; this looks like a template it uses in some cases. Very odd as I don't think I've changed anything (except played with the online chat) for a while.

I mean the top-level index page that shows its URL as index.php and nothing more; the next level of index with some ?board= selector does not show the effect.

Having expanded out all the html in Firebug, I can see that columns 3 and 4 include <span class="smalltext">, column 2 does not (so I unpresume that the various width settings are relevant). But the same method is used in those lower-level indexes too, only with a few extra ones. 

Of course that's observed in a browser that does not show the effect. (And reported by someone who, as you can tell, doesn't understand html!)

OK .... I've taken a look

The Board Index template hasn't changed since 18th December 2006, and the overall page template since 19th August this year - in the last fortnight, the only files to change on the coffee shop have been some new attachment images added.  Everything else in the databases.

I HAVE modified that file from over 10 years ago to add "smalltext" - actually I think it's a reasonable move to help make better use of screen estate, and for consistency of columns.  I can see why it was done the way it was, but for a largely returning visitor base who know the site well, it's probably better changed.

Reporters - Please let me know if this makes any difference (please let me know if it doesn't make a difference too!)

Yes, that's small - the same as the last post and other secondary items, and much smaller (in my previously unaffected browser) than on the lower-level indexes.

I note that other areas of the page - the bits that don't change at the top and bottom - include this line: <span class="middletext"> .

For me, it seems to have got smaller, in the last hour or two.
Standard windows laptop.

It has,  When you press the 'Home' button the text about the boards is now all the same size, but the Info Center section is still larger text.

Welcome to the forum sheepbingo  :D

Agree with CfN. This is something that does happen to me occasionally and has been doing it possibly since I joined. Unsure but it could just be on my mobile as well and it only occurs once every few months

Today the front page (no. 3 in the examples on previous page) has smaller text than usual. Other pages, including "Unread posts" and "New replies" not affected. Opera on a laptop.

Just a quick note to Grahame to say thank you for fixing this, and apologies if I caused much 'head scratching' in the process.  Much easier to read again  ;)

Not sure it's totally fixed - but glad it's much better.   Browser compatability and CSS conflicts from within an old piece of software is like walking on eggshells with one hand tied behind your back and the other trying to hold your trousers up!

I can't agree. Why should the main text on just one page be in the smaller of the two text sizes used (i.e. small), rather than the larger one? The smaller size is used throughout the site (though there may be some exceptions) for material you can generally do without, and will not mind having to zoom in a bit to read if you need to. I don't see how that applies to the boards list; I would expect that to use the same size as the threads lists you reach from it.

Moreover, if you have things set up so that larger text size (i.e. medium) is just comfortable to read, so as to make best use of screen size, you then have just one page that you struggle to read. Remember it was the size larger still (i.e. large) that caused the problem.

Frankly, it's a nightmare to get it set up so that it works in the way everyone wants, and I'm not surprised there are differing views. People tend to get used to (and like) what they see, so change (to anything) has to make far more gains than losses to be seen as generally good when it's first brought in.   I'm actually a bit surprised at the general positive tone.

Technically, I haven't actually removed any "large" markers and suspect they were seen on some browsers by default; the css and software is old, and I equated what working with it's like in a previous post.   It could be possible - I suppose - to give members a configuration they can alter, supplying their own style sheets and lots of other setting - but lots of work (and to echo one of our member "ooze gonna pay4 it" and I suspect that very few would actually make use of the change anyway; you're a pretty pragmatic bunch and do / will overlook foibles that I and the team are aware of but which we don't have the resource to fix.   It could be that I could add an extra style option or two, and indeed if someone wanted to volunteer to set one up, I could provide a way that a new style sheet could be loaded from that person's test site.

Just noticed something funny about the front page: it's not all the font that's small. It appears to be only the board names and descriptions; the stuff to the right of that (last post by..., in.... ) seems larger.

Unless you're seeing something odd specific to your screen, I think that's an illusion. The columns are still sized for their old sizes, so the board names and descriptions are surrounded by empty space while the secondary stuff in the other two columns is crammed in tightly. Try narrowing the display* so it all goes multi-line and see if the effect persists.

*or zooming in

Definitely no illusion! Font is definitely larger in the 'last post by' column compared to the board name and description. The attached is as seen in Firefox on my laptop.

Well, when I zoom that image right up to really huge, and measure it with a ruler on my screen, they are exactly the same - try it!