Help In Display, Fonts, Title Bar, Menus Etc

[trt]

I just cant seem to get my display right, so I dont have to strain my eyes.

I have the font size medium in display, and would also like a darker font, as its just a light grey at the moment.

In control panel/display, I have the following sizes. fonts 14, title bars 14, menus 14, msg box 12, palette 12, icons 10, & tool-tips 14, and just clicked box for bold, but nothing much seems to happen.
Should the sizes above be bigger?

I am on Win8, f/fox, thanks if anybody can help.

[Buenchico]

The first thing to do is to check your monitor settings here:
http://reeddesign.co.uk/testcard.htm
You need to be able to see the numbers from 0 to 10 on both of the relevant lines. (If you're seeing grey text, I'd be prepared to bet that you can't!). Follow the instructions there to improve things.

Next, check that you've got ClearType enabled and optimised:
Click Start and enter 'cleart' into the box.
Click on 'Adjust ClearType Text'.
Check that there's a tick against 'Turn on ClearType', then keep clicking 'Next' and selecting what looks best to you. (It's just like visiting the optician!)

Those two things might be all that you need to do. Let us know how you get on.

[trt]

Will do Chris, and let you know.thanks.

[trt]

Hi Chris, I am having a bit of trouble, confusion with the below section.,

The next section is Black through to White using the four intermediate greys in the websafe palette (the full palette is shown at the bottom of the page). The third section is a grey scale in 10% steps from black to white and the fourth section grades from Black to White in 480 steps - one step per pixel. The bottom two sections will look ‘dithered’ if your monitor is set to 256 colours (8 bit) or less, and the bottom section will look slightly ‘stepped’ in thousands of colours (16 bit).

I cant seem to find, To set up your monitor correctly set both the Brightness and Contrast controls at their default positions, and can only see a slide button for that.

it tells me also to click on the white screen, then what?

I know a bit about the eye test thingy, the little red fox, .

Sorry to be a pain, but i think you know my pc expertise by now :-)

[Buenchico]

Ignore all the stuff about 'dithering' (that's something I'm good at!) and 'steps'. Simply concentrate on the numbers (ensuring that you can see 0 to 10 on both of the numbered lines).

If you're using a PC and monitor (rather than a laptop) forget about adjusting anything on your computer; it's the buttons on your monitor you need to be pressing.

If you're using a laptop things aren't so easy. Quite often you can only adjust the brightness. (That's normally done by pressing the 'Fn' button together with the buttons with 'light' and 'dark' sunshine symbols on them). You might find that there's no way of adjusting the contrast but you could try right-clicking on the desktop to see if there are any relevant 'display properties' available there.

[trt]

Hi Chris,
(That's normally done by pressing the 'Fn' button together with the buttons with 'light' and 'dark' sunshine symbols on them).

Do you mean by the Fn button, the key letters?
I dont seem to have any

[trt]

sorry accidentally pressed enter.

I have a laptop, which I have attached a larger monitor, and a cordless keyboard & mouse.

## Simply concentrate on the numbers (ensuring that you can see 0 to 10 on both of the numbered lines). ##

Where do I find this?

Will right click on desktop and have another look there.
Thanks again, owe you a pint :-)

[Buenchico]

If what you're actually looking at is a standalone monitor (rather than the display on your laptop) then it's the controls on that monitor you ought to be adjusting.

I'm rather worried if you can't find the numbers as they ought to leap out at you! The main part of the test card I linked to has 6 coloured blocks across the top. The next line down has 6 blocks which go from pure black, through shades of grey, to pure white. The third line repeats that concept but with 11 blocks instead of 6, with each block being numbered from 0 to 10. The final line is similar except that, instead of 11 distinct blocks, the colour gradually changes from pure black to pure white. (However the numbers 0 to 10 are retained).

Your aim is to ensure that you can see ALL of the numbers, from 0 to 10, on BOTH of the last two lines AND that you've got pure black on the left of lines 2 & 3, with pure white on the right of them. If you can't achieve that there's not a pu$$y in pergatory's chance that you'll get text to look right!

[trt]

Thanks again Chris,
My daughter is coming today, so will let her follow your instructions, as my aging brain keeps tell me to go back to bed :-)

Will let you know how she gets on.