Okay, here’s a question for all you Mac experts out there
From the comments on yesterday’s MacHate post, I can see I’ve got some knowledgeable computer people here. So I’ve got a question for you.
If I place my Gateway and my Mac side by side (both are laptops of approximately the same dimensions) and go to the website RealClearPolitics on each, and then make the font size so that I can actually read it (which means taking it up one notch from the default font on the Mac), the fonts look to be approximately the same size. So far so good.
But on the Gateway the page is nicely spaced and balanced. Each article and author is on a single line. The Mac can’t seem to handle it, either in Safari or Firefox. It can’t fit the very same words on a single line; most of the titles and authors of the articles wrap around to the next line, and the whole thing is much less readable and more cluttered.
When I’m composing my blog on WordPress or even just viewing it, there are also font problems on the Mac that don’t exist on the Gateway. All is well on the latter: when the font size is good I can see the entire blog; no problem. But on the Mac it varies wildly, even the text on a single webpage. There are differences on the Mac between Safari and Firefox; Safari comes out only slightly ahead in the font size sweepstakes, but it has other problems.
I won’t bother with more details. Let’s just say it’s extremely annoying and requires constant adjustment of the Mac font size back and forth even on the same webpage, with none of them being satisfactory.
And believe me, I’m not using an unusually large font size either; merely one that isn’t teeny-tiny. Also, this is by no means the only problem I have with the Mac; au contraire. It’s just one of the more annoying and in-your-face.
And don’t tell me to change the display resolution. I’ve tried every single one, and none solve the problem, although some of them create new ones (such as stretched pictures).
So, any suggestions?
[ADDENDUM: And why, oh why, do my nifty new scrolling Amazon widgets fail to display consistently in Safari, although Firefox handles them quite nicely? If the Mac’s so great with graphics, why does Safari fall down on that task?]
Sigh.
I use Safari and the widgets do not appear if I access your webpage thru RSS feed which I usually do (that way I don’t constantly have to refresh to update posts and comments)
If I type in your webpage address, or use a shortcut link (did you know on Mac, if you drag and drop the icon preceding the http:www…. address to your desktop, you have shortcut to website. You don’t even have to open browser or new browser page. You just double click on the shortcut now on your desktop, and it automatically opens the browser you have designated as your default browser and opens the webpage.
Alternately, you can drag the icon to the grey area on the title bar just below the address box, and voilé ! You have a shortcut! (when you drag & drop the icon, a drop down box appears so you can enter desired name for website. This allows you to shorten website name so you can place more of these “favorites” to the title bar (altho’ you can continually add more and if you run out of space, a double arrow will appear on right after last shortcut and if you click, rest of the shortcuts will appear for selection. Much easier than poring thru numerous bookmarks (I’ve accumulated hundreds over the years, and tho’ I have them organized by subject, often their are so many it’s a pain to go to window, click on subject, find the desired bookmark & click to go to website.
(FYI, in Safari, holding option & command keys while clicking
“B” will open new browser window with your bookmarks) If you want to remove one of shortcuts. Just drag the one you want to get rid of off the bar and it disappears w/ puff of smoke! (Similarly, you can remove anything from your dock if you don’t need it there and dock seems to get crowded)
For more neat tricks, see last paragraph.
Re: side by side Gateway vs. Mac comparison, do you have the windows on each sized the same? If your window on the Mac is narrower, it just moves the text to be shorter lines of text across and continues in sequence below (i.e. instead of wider paragraph with fewer lines, you see a narrower paragraph with more lines of text. That’s often faster to read. This is called “wrapping” the text.
More FYI, I’ve found a series of books that have taught me all sorts of things, including dozens of obscure neat tricks, shortcuts and the like. It’s a rather giant paperback and is published, usually whenever the operating system is upgraded. The title is “Mac OS X Leopard (or Tiger, or Snow Leopard or whatever version is on your Mac) The Missing Manual” by David Pogue (Pogue Press/O’Reilly)
They are fantastic! You need not read it sequentially, but may find subject you are interested in via index. The text is entertaining with wry sense of humor, and the pages are filled with illustrations of screen exactly as you would see on your computer. In addition, gazillions of shortcuts that you’d never know that “shock & awe” This is how I’ve learned so much. (And I keep list of some of the little tricks that I don’t use often (& tend to forget) on a Word page that I keep handy on desktop or easy-to-access location. Available thru Amazon at best price — so all you Mac users who want to learn more, click those neo Widgets now and order!
Have you tried Camino? It is a pretty good browser, and free. You can configure the toolbar to include icons for increasing and decreasing the text size. I don’t know how it would handle your column width issues but its worth a try. What about internet explorer for the mac?
I just thought of something that may be happening. There are at least two kinds of fonts available on computers, fixed spacing and proportional. I would check to see if you are using the same font on the Gateway as on the mac. If one is fixed and the other proportional, pick the one that is not giving you problems and load it on the other and see if that fixes your problem. (There are also serif and sans serif but I don’t think that would be the problem.)
the authors are not looking at MACs and pcs when they make the pages.
in the early days of web, we went nuts trying to have 20 computers runign with different browsers on them to get things near the same..
however, it became too much of a cash hole.
so now, since most stuff is on ms servers… and most businesses have pc… everyone is developing mostly for firefox on pc
MAC market is too small most of the time to bother.
even worse, is that pages for the blind and all that other stuff… almost no websites are written for that at all.
its really a cost market share issue..
the volume of pc type systems world wide means that pc comes first.
everything you do for the mac is more expensive per unit costs given the smaller cost reductions due to smaller scales.
a program i write for the pc will run on literally millions and millions of computers. in contrast the percentage with macs is much slower.
same if your writing a browser…
a browser version is wrtten for pc first..
then ported to mac… not written for the mac.
these are the real world reasons competent people dont get into the image reasons for choosing machines.
they are too competent to want to look good and be ineffective.
the smart prefer to be effective, and to hell with good looks.
You are zooming the text only instead of the whole page; in Safari to up top to View and unclick on “Zoom Text Only”. Then hit control-shift-+ and the whole page increases in size.
I’m sorry, command-shift-+ (I just switched from a PC to a Mac and love it).
…and increase the size of the window if there’s any smushing.
neo, what’s happening is that you are experiencing the result of web page authors optimizing their page design for IE only, instead of accommodating other browsers. This is reasonable only if you assume (as does most of the world and most IT departments) that simply everybody uses Windows.
Resistance is futile.
One question: Can you show us screenshots of what you’re talking about? It would make it a little easier.
I use a mac on everything, all day. The widgets display just fine for me but I think I know why.
Up until I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I used to have all kinds of issues with java and other active content on web pages. Since Snow Leopard (10.6.1) almost all of those issues have disappeared. Best 30 bucks I ever spent.
I have the latest Snow Leopard also, and believe me you can make it as large as you want with no problems
I use a Mac and don’t have the problem you mention. All on one line with no wraparound with Firefox.
Almost all of the websites I visit with Safari on my Mac look fine. There are only a handful that I’ve seen that I have had problems with. Two I can think of off the top of my head are MLB.com and Townhall.com.
(Is it just me or is Townhall.com the ugliest website on the internet? It’s like they’re trying to fill every available pixel on the screen with content.)
I’m using Safari 4.0.3 on OS 10.5.8, by the way.
I’ve read that Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) is only for Intel-based Macs. I bought mine just before they switched to Intel processors.
Richard Diamond and others: I had a long talk with a guy at Best Buy today who was able to figure it out (it took him quite a while—I mean we had a long talk).
The gist of it is that, although my Mac and my Gateway appear to be almost exactly the same size, the screen of the Gateway is slightly larger than the Mac, and he said the problem had to do with that. The ratios of something or other are different (and cannot be changed by changing the settings), and it means I get that wraparound effect at certain font sizes with the Mac that I don’t get with the PC.
Command and +/- is great for zooming in and out of webpages with teeny print, thought it won’t help reduce text so it fits on one line (maybe changing the default font in Preferences?). I love my Mac (currently writing a dissertation on it and use Scrivener — the best writing software out there and only available on Mac).
I would recommend also playing around with Expose (and hot corners) — totally changes everything! I can whip around so fast between multiple windows.
And Townhall is AWFUL — so confusing and hard to read!
Dale: Perhaps the newer Macs have a “zoom text only” feature. Mine doesn’t seem to have it. When I go to “view” in Safari (or Firefox, for that matter), that choice does not appear.
Maybe that’s why I have problems with the widgets in Safari, as well. Perhaps it’s because my Mac is between a year and a half and two years old. It’s just a guess, though.
Neo: Actually, my Mac is five years old. It’s a G5 that was the top of the line when I bought it. I’ve upgraded the OS as new upgrades have come out, and I’ve also kept up with the free software updates. It’s been mostly trouble-free.
I don’t know about “zoom text only”. I haven’t heard of that, but in the top button bar in Safari are a small and large letter “A”. I can change the size of the text by clicking them. On most sites I don’t have to.
You can also choose Safari > Preferences > Appearance in the menu bar at the top of the screen and experiment with different fonts and sizes.
Re: Best Buy guy’s theory: Wrong! The screen size should NOT make a difference. BUT the screen RESOLUTION (as denoted in pixels) can make a difference. It changes the font size, and it makes a difference in clarity and definition of what’s on screen.
If you click on System Preferences in your Dock (it’s usually right next to the Finder, or you can click on Finder -> Macintosh HD -> Applications. List of applications appear and they are listed in alphabetical order. Click on System Preferences (it is equivalent of Control Panel in Windows) Click on Display in System Preferences. You will see list of dimensions, i.e. A pixels x B pixels (denoting length and width of window). The higher the numbers, the smaller things will appear, but they are sharpest with more clarity. i.e. more pixels allow more refined resolution.
If you want to compare your Mac’s resolution to your Gateway PC’s, after you see what resolution your Mac setting is (the set of nos. that is highlighted when you open Display; and which you can change simply by clicking on an alternate set of pixel dimensions (nos.) You might want to try a few to see which you like best.), on your PC, go to Start-> Control Panel -> Display and you will see a similar list of pixel dimensions. They may or may not match your Mac’s available settings, depending on how old each computer is.
I’m sure you will find this will help you adjust your Mac so you can best read what is on screen.
By the way, if you don’t know where something (an Applic., a file, etc.) is located, you can always click Command Key + Space Bar and a white rect. box appears in upper right hand corner. Type in what you’re looking for (can be application, file, utility…even group of words that you remember writing but can’t remember name of file in which you saved it) & box drops down with anything that has the word/words you typed in. (Note: In System Preferences -> Spotlight, you can choose the order in which Spotlight lists all places in which words you typed appear: i.e. Applications, Files, Web Pages, etc.) Click on anything on Spotlight list and it will open whatever it is you’re searching for (whether it’s Applic., File, Document, Webpage). You don’t need to worry about having browser or application or Finder window open — Spotlight does it automatically.
csimon: Thanks, but I already did all of that on my own—I tried every possible resolution. That was one of the first things I did. It did not fix the problem.
I can’t explain it the way the guy at Best Buy explained it, but he actually seemed to know what he was talking about (he wasn’t just the salesperson, he was some special tech guy they directed me to).
I suggested Camino twice above and it seems to have gone by you without consideration. Camino is the Mozilla emulation of its mac-like browser. It’s firefox for the mac. I have been using it for years. This morning I ran Camino side by side with Safari on my iMac running Snow Leopard and noticed the following:
1. The white background for the same web page is noticeably brighter in Camino than in Safari. Remember, this is also on the very same computer screen. I have no idea why.
2. The page layout was pretty much identical at the same type size settings but the type was noticeably sharper in Camino than Safari. Again, I have no idea why.
3. My experience has been that Camino is more stable than Safari, even the latest emulation of Safari.
3. As with Safari, in the preferences menu there is an appearance submenu that allows you to set the minimum type size for proportional and fixed spacing fonts. If this was not a help in Safari it will most likely be frustrating in Camino. But, I would play with it to see what happens when you set larger minimum font sizes.
4. I port over to Safari every time Apple releases a new update and quickly go back to Camino.
5. My impression, without actually doing a time test, is that Camino loads pages faster.
Steve G: I will try the Camino thing when I get a chance. Right now I’m mega-busy! I also somehow doubt it will help (but I know, I need to get a better attitude!). Thanks for the suggestion.
Have you tried expanding (or contracting) your column width a letter or two in Safari? A small thing like this is often all that it takes to resolve hours of frustration. You know, like forgetting to check a box in the fourth level of imbedded menus and spending days trying to fix a problem that just won’t go away. Someone above suggested the reference book for the version of OSX you are running. Not a bad idea. Sometimes while researching the solution of one problem the answer to another (that you gave up on long ago) is right there.
Fonts look to be the same from computer to computer but the size of, say, times roman 18px, might be infinitesimally larger or smaller in mac than in windows. While they may look alike they may not be exactly identical. A lot depends on the source(s) of the software fonts and whether Apple went out of its way to spruce up the font to make it look “better” than windows.
Good luck.
I have been playing with computers since the VIC-20 and ATARI, grudgingly moving to DOS and then windows (through Vista) because that is what we used at the office. I got an Apple powerbook about 6 years ago and immediately liked its stability and relative ease of use. But, I bought the reference book and spent some time with it, which helped to understand the differences. I suffer the pc with XP at work as it is slow, clunky and fire walled to protect it from viruses. The iMac is great in comparison.
It is close to impossible to diagnose problems without seeing them up close. If you have an Apple store nearby, go to visit the Genius bar. If you don’t, find a friend with lots of MAC experience. I use regularly a mac mini on a 24″ display, a macbook pro, and a macbook air (with different screen sizes and resolutions), I do not see the problem you described. Good luck.
OK. First of all, way to many people try to increase the size of the text on their screen by lowering the resolution of the monitor. This is a bad idea, especially on flat panels monitor and laptops. LCDs actually have a native resolution. Lowering will make everything “bigger” but it does that by blowing everything up and making it fuzzy.
The right way to fix something like that is to tell windows and the programs to use larger fonts/icons. This
Neo, I’m using Safari on an 4 year old MacBook laptop. One of the first Intel Macs they made, and RealClearPolitics.com isn’t doing that text wrapping to me, unless I have Zoom Text Only checked in the View menu in Safari, or I set a minium font size under Preferences > Advanced.
This particular problem isn’t a windows vs. mac one. It’s just how the website designers layed out the page (combined with using a different size/resolution screen than they anticipated). Usually developers specify particular size elements such as images, column widths, fonts, font sizes, etc. When you change these is when you get the weird wrapping.
I find that using the minimum font thing or zooming text leads to these problems. The best way to deal with this is to use the command and + key to make the whole page bigger. This has the benefit of not distorting things (the way increasing the font size does) or bluring things (the way lowing the screen resolution does)