Another quality page linked to Jim's Pen is Central!

Style Adjustment Page

This page is dedicated to those managers and programmers at Microsoft
(and, I have to admit, to a lesser extent at Netscape)
who spent so much time messing HTML up for all of us.

Do these pages look a bit strangely laid out? Are columns uneven, typography a bit messy?

If so, here's how to make your pages look as nice (or almost as nice) as the ones I designed for you.

First, look at the green box and the blue box here:

All the Nudes
Unfit 2 Print

Except for the color (duh!), do the green box and the blue box look alike? Or almost alike? Are the two typefaces the same, or almost the same? Are they the same size, or almost the same size?

If so, cool! You can go now.

If not, thank Microsoft! (And, I have to admit, Netscape, to a lesser extent.) On my computer, the Internet Explorer version of the boxes has a larger type size in the blue box, and sometimes a different type face entirely. For example, I can easily get:

When I design a layout with multiple columns, like a newspaper, the differences can be as big as this:

Netscape version Internet Explorer version

The typeface for Internet Explorer is so much bigger, it totally screws up the alignment of the columns.
Of course, I never expected the two to look exactly alike. But I was surprised at how different the two browsers actually are.

The Solution (I think)

The culprits are the values for font size and screen resolution which Internet Explorer users typically have set for them by I.E.'s defaults. Netscape's default font size is 12, whereas I.E.'s is 14. Most important, I.E. assumes that users' screens are set to 96 dots per inch, whereas Netscape has no way to adjust this parameter (and thus typically results in a setting of 72).

I won't bore you with why I think Microsoft did it; suffice it to say that it has to do with paganism, the number 666, Saturn's upcoming conjunction with Mercury, the shots fired from the grassy knoll, and world domination.

The solution (since Netscape's dpi can't be adjusted) is to adjust these default preference settings of I.E. as follows:

(If it's available, it also helps to change the Times New Roman font to just plain Times. But not all computers have it.)

This results in a MUCH better correspondence between the two browsers. It's still not identical -- but then again, I never expected perfection, just a rough correspondence:

Netscape version Internet Explorer version (revised)

So now, go forth and surf in uniformity!