Family Historian User Group

Must admit I like !

ID:1991

I only installed it because I was fed up with auto update nagging me and shut down telling me it was going to install unless I clicked on a special link. As this meant one of my kids was bound to install by accident when they shut down I decided to bow to the inevitable.

When I installed, it asked something about making the fonts easier to read, now they are blurred. If anyone knows how to turn this font 'improvement' off, please let me know.

This is because of the 'Clear Type' being turned on. It is apparently really designed to make viewing fonts on LCD monitors better. There are ways of 'tuning' the fonts. You can turn off clear type in the Options under Advanced, 'Always use cleartype for HTML'.

More about it here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/02/03/524367.aspx

and
http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/2006/10/t ... n-ie7.html

Thanks Nick.

I decided I would look at this with an open mind and following the advice from Microsoft on the first link in your reply, I ran the ClearType tuner.  I found no difference so I turned it off.  I notice the vast majority of comments on the Microsoft web site don't seem to like it.

For anyone interested, here is a before and after image, with ClearType turned on on the left and off on the right.  It's all down to personal preference.

I think more people are likely to make a comment if they don't like something than if they do.

Not sure whether this is relevant in your case but in particular clear type only really works properly on an LCD monitor where your screen resolution matches the native mode of the monitor. I believe the native mode is usually the maximum resolution that the monitor can show (when you select the slider in the display properties in control panel). Personally I always run an LCD monitor in the highest resolution so that I can get as much information on the screen as possible and because the image quality is much better. Clear type makes very little difference on my 19' CRT monitor at home (1280x1024) but is a big improvement on my 20' LCD monitor at work (1600x1200)

I have installed IE7, but gave up using IE for day to day jobs 6 months ago, as I prefer Firefox. The only site I use IE for is ancestry as the viewer does not work in firefox, but I have the IE Tab extension installed so it automatically changes to the IE rendering engine when I needs to.

I never run LCD monitors at anything but default resolution they tend to look horribly blurry.

I upgraded to IE7 but there were still security loopholes so I have now installed Firefox which is much more secure. I would recommend Firefox over IE any day but I keep IE7 to hand just in case.

Jane, I haven't found any problems viewing BMD images on Ancestry, in fact they seem to load even quicker which is great.

For BTinternet.com users. Once installed check you can get to things like 'Change my password', for your BTinternet account. If you get an error message when loading try the following: Tools> Internet Options> Advanced Tab> Scroll down to Security and make sure Use SSL 2.0 is checked. That had been removed when I updated.

Hannah1871 said:
Jane, I haven't found any problems viewing BMD images on Ancestry, in fact they seem to load even quicker which is great.

That's probably true, I just prefer the Save option for Census options better with the 'advanced' viewer.

Nick Walker said:
I think more people are likely to make a comment if they don't like something than if they do.

I agree, and in this case I also agree it's down to personal preference and monitor configuration.

Nick Walker said:
Not sure whether this is relevant in your case but in particular clear type only really works properly on an LCD monitor where your screen resolution matches the native mode of the monitor.

Just to confirm I have a 17' LCD, running in native mode, 1280x1024.  If I ever change I will check again, but for my monitor I think it looks better without.

Jane,

Have you tried using Ancestry in the new Firefox 2.0 - I have recently upgraded my Firefox browser, and some sites that didn't work in the old one are fine in 2.0

Personally I now use Firefox for everything unless a specific site doesn't load properly.

Jeremy