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Recently I downloaded the latest version of the Firefox browser. The current broad public release stable version is 2.0.0.18 - which I already use on a daily basis and like very much - but this download was of the most recent release beta for the upcoming Firefox 3. Now I know some of you won't like the idea of using beta software on your computer but just bear with me here okay!?
Whatever your stance on Microsoft Internet Explorer versus Mozilla Firefox, it is a fact that the more recent releases of the most popular browsers (and yes, I know that some of you may well be votaries of other browsers such as Opera etc.) are unquestionably technically considerably superior to their predecessors. For some time now I've been using Firefox about 95% of the time for my own general-purpose browsing because it's much faster and generally more aesthetic to use on my PC ( your mileage with different software/hardware may well be different ) - but in fairness to Microsoft I also recently downloaded the latest beta release of their browser too and it is also coming along nicely; the performance differential is less marked now than it used to be but I still prefer Firefox which is generally much zippier on my machine.
There is a really NEAT feature in this most bang-up-to-date version of the Firefox browser that is so thumpingly novel that I recommend that the more intrepid of you download and install this browser on to your system so you can try it out for yourself. Under the Zoom menu item there is a sub-option that allows you to enlarge the size of the TEXT ONLY on a website without other aspects of the display being affected; now, here's the beauty part, the browser automatically notes your preference for an increased font size on this particular website and HENCEFORTH AUTOMATICALLY OPENS THAT PARTICULAR WEBSITE FOR YOU WITH THE FONT SIZE ALREADY INCREASED TO WHAT YOU PREFER! How about THAT for a feature! I know that the zoom capability has been a feature now for some time in quite a few browsers, but to the best of my knowledge this is the first time that a browser developer has incorporated the ability for the browser to automatically save a changed text size that is site-specific. I think it's a fantastic little feature. Try it, I bet you'll love it! Oh, and in case you're worried about reversability, if you decide that you prefer the default font size on a particular website after all, you can of course revert.
Hmm. It occurs to me that there are some qualifiers that I should perhaps add in making this recommendation. The purveyors of beta versions of software invariably trot out standardised advice to the effect that you should only install betas on non-mission-critical setups - whether at home or at work - and that you should always assiduously back-up everything of importance first. It is possible that people with monoboot Windows systems - and that's probably about 85% of the computer-using public even in this day and age - might find that having two versions of Firefox in one Windows operating system/partition will cause Firefox to disable add-ons that worked just fine in the earlier version but which are incompatible with the new one and have to be disabled by the setup routine. This sounds trivial but its been my experience that it will also disable the functionality of the add-ons in the older version as well! And, if this older version is one that you do most of your work on, well, it can be a bit of a pain! My tip? Only do this if you've got a multi-boot system where you can install the beta into a partition where it's not in competition with another already-installed version of Firefox! Then you shouldn't have any real hassles.
I find that this site displays onscreen most aesthetically when using the Firefox browser.(Both in Windows and Linux.) It also displays (renders) well in the Konqueror web browser proprietary to many distros (versions) of Linux. Internet Explorer uses its own proprietary rendering engine ( a 'rendering engine' for those of you who don't know is the internal workings of the browser that takes the instructions given by the webmaster in HTML code and converts those into an onscreen display for the viewer.) and Firefox uses one called Gecko. If you're unhappy about certain aspects of the aesthetics when viewing this website you might try switching to an alternate browser. (One of the things I love about Firefox is that it's possible to install an add-on called IE-tab which allows you to switch between rendering engines at the click of a mouse.)