Are there any clever people on this forum?

[Minos]

When I logged on to this forum today I found that the fonts in the messages, the thread names, number of replies etc had all changed to Bold (either that or a thicker font anyway). Other text seems to be unaffected.

I'd just been clearing up my system – uninstalling and rearranging things – and I must have altered a setting somewhere. Any ideas?

BTW Other web pages don't seem to be affected, but the same has happened to the Infogrames US forums website.

[Diablo]

HAHA !

Enough ideas for you? Set the letter -size down ! I had the same prob !

[Zrbyte]

Sounds about right to me.
goto View ---> Text Size ---> Medium.
That should fix it.

[Minos]

...this text.


No, sorry, I already tried the text size in the IE View settings.

It's only some of the text. The Members' details, date and time stamps and so on seem to be unchanged. And like I say, other websites don't seem to be affected.

:bigeye: :wierdblu:

[Zrbyte]

try clearing your web cache and purging all of your temporary files (inc cookies)

[Minos]

Done that too... Gah! It doesn't really matter, but it certainly looks rather strange...

What's more, it happened once before, but it went back to normal and I can't remember doing anything that time either...

It must be Diablo's fault. The monster turning on its master!

[Zrbyte]

Could you post us a screenshot so we can see exactly what you mean?
also this may sound really stupid but have you tried restarting your comp?

[Minos]

Yes, I have...

Here's a section of the screen:

[Minos]

Now please don't tell me that's what it SHOULD look like...

Before, the text in the subject line was the same font size as the message text, but in bold (which made it look slightly larger). Now – well, you can see. The message text is larger, and possibly bold as well.

[Gandalf_uk]

You havent put any of the windows Accessibility on have you. (Just a wilde Guess)

[Minos]

Nope – afraid not. I don't even have any of the accessibility options installed...

What puzzles me is the way that different bits of text are affected disproportionately – like I say, the text in the subject line used to be the same size as the body text, but now the body text is larger than the subject line text...

Ah, well, thanks for all your replies. Like I say, it doesn't really matter, and if the worst comes to the worst I can restore my entire system from an earlier backup.

[Zrbyte]

Ok, Try going into your display properties, then go to the settings Tab, Click the Advanced button. Here you will see a little drop down box telling you what your current system font is, If it is set to large or Other you should change it to small.
This is the only other thing I can think of at the moment, but if that doesnt help could you tell me what version of windows you are running and what resolution you are running at.

[2potscreama]

Minos, is this a trick question?

[The Boss]

Hey Minos :)

curiosity mate, what version of IE are you running?

[Minos]

First, in answer to your questions: I'm using Windows 98 SE, and Internet Explorer 5. I use a resolution of 1600 x 1200, and large fonts (125%). And no, it's not the latter setting that's the problem – none of the other text is affected, only some of the stuff on this and the US Infogrames forum (well, it may have affected other websites as well, but I would only know if I was familiar with their normal appearance).

Everything was fine (in other Windows applications) until I logged onto this site. Then I saw that the text appeared to be a different size to what I was familiar with. It's hard to say exactly (I have attached a comparison below) but it looks like a different font – thicker, wider spaced and serif instead of sans.

(BTW, it was my mistake to say that the message text should be the same size as the text in the subject line – I must have been confused by one being bold and the other normal.)

I did look at the source code for the page but of course one thing I didn't make a note of was the font names. However, I've no reason to suppose the web page is different – just my browser's interpretation of it. Could it have substituted a different font for some reason? The font description given in the source (as you can check yourself) is:

"verdana, arial, helvetica"

I have Verdana and Arial installed in my fonts folder, but not Helvetica. It LOOKS as if it's displaying Verdanna where it was displaying Arial before (can't be sure about Helvetica because I don't have it, but from what I remember Helvetica is a sans serif font, so it won't be that).

Right, now for the weird bit. I restored from my last hard disc backup and the appearance went back to what it was before – allowing me to make the screen capture for the comparison below. But then, actually while I was in the process of composing this message, it changed back again!

Anway, like I say, it hardly matters; it doesn't affect the functionality of the forum and it doesn't affect anything else at all, but I'd like to know why the hell it's behaving as it is... I'm already beginning to suspect it's a conspiracy to drive me mad! :wierdblu:

[Minos]

Well, it IS displaying Verdana instead of Arial – it occurred to me to check by altering the [FontSubstitutes] section in my win.ini file so that there was a line:

Verdana=Arial

After restarting the computer and logging on again things were back to how they were originally – the narrower, more compact font, which evidently is Arial, instead of Verdana. I even deleted the line and restarted, and, sure enough, when I logged on the 'new' font was back again.

I've now put the line back again and am looking at Arial once more.

OK, so it's decided to display Verdana instead of Arial. Fair enough. But why does it change (apparently) arbitrarily?

Come on, some of you lot are supposed to be budding web page designers – I know as much about HTML as I do about flying. What the hell's going on? Could it be a virus or something?

[Understudy]

The root of the issue might be that the infogrames board (looking about, it seems to occur on other vBulletin boards also) uses the HTML tag <FONT FACE>...

eg.<font face="verdana, arial, helvetica" size="2" >This tag is not actually an official HTML tag, but is supported by both IE and Netscape. Most pages I've found on the subject say 'don't use FONT FACE' (example (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/designer/face7.htm) from the horses mouth) as the results are generally unpredicatble and depend on the set-up of the client machine...

Supposedly, the browser then goes through the list of these fonts and applies the first font that the system has loaded, or whatever the user has set as default if none are found...

I dunno why your machine has suddenly decided to use verdana instead of arial, or why my machine (and most of the rest of us) seem to see Arial instead of Verdana which looks like it should be selected first :confused:

I'm tempted to suggest that the vBulletin code is wrong and the font recognition should be case sensitive (spot the unix programmer).... but I'd imagine windose doesn't usually give a stuff about that.

Maybe someone has time to mess about with some html pages and see if they can repoduce the results.... its humourously possible to select a non-latin font, so that your web pages are illegible in IE or Netscape... there is no way to turn this function off either... :rollani:

[2potscreama]

my machine uses Ronish, cos I'm clever.

[Minos]

Thanks Understudy. :tup:

I had wondered why the change only affected some web pages (indeed the only ones I noticed were the two Infogrames forums). I did have a look at some other web pages, and though I saw the term FONT FACE in one, the list was something like "Arial, Helvetica, MS Sans Serif" – all very similar typefaces.

Now you've pointed it out, I've since seen the term type="text/css".

But as you say, the page you linked to didn't explain why Verdana (the first font mentioned on the list) isn't invariably used for me or other viewers of the Infogrames forum.

Some user agents also support a FACE attribute which accepts a comma separated list of font names in order of preference. This is used to search for an installed font with the corresponding name.Presumably this was the intention of the designers. Of course, I didn't know until you said so that other users didn't see it in Verdana – all I was aware of was that it had taken to changing the font displayed on my setup, something which is still a mystery. :wierdblu:

As an aside, I feel slightly smug about the other point made:

Users can't override fonts specified using FONT FACE

Unlike other author-specified page attributes such as link color, text color and background color, the Web browsers that support FONT FACE don't let you switch it off (with the exception of Microsoft® Internet Explorer 3 for the Apple Macintosh). If one of the fonts listed is installed on the target computer it will be used to render text and there's nothing the user can do to stop it, except for physically removing that font from your system. If someone doesn't want Internet Explorer or Netscape users to read their pages they can specify <FONT FACE="Algerian, Playbill"> or something equally daft.
As I found, you can (albeit rather inelegantly) overcome this problem by altering the [FontSubstitutes] section in your win.ini file (after you've found the name of the indecipherable font from the source code of the web page). However this presumably has the downside of disabling that font altogether within Windows – you really want a temporary solution to the problem.

Anyway, thanks for your reply! Your efforts are much appreciated. Perhaps I can now demand an explanation from Alex – or at least get him to alter the font order to give the more aesthetically pleasing Arial first on the list... :rollani:

[Minos]

Originally posted by 2potscreama
my machine uses Ronish, cos I'm clever. As in "Ronish is the in-character alphabet for Fools and Heroes"?

To quote the the Goon show, "Which one are you?" :grntngue:

[2potscreama]

Yup, Ronish as in Fools and Heroes.

Dont play it any more, unfortunatly.

The guy who runs the Grimsby branch wants me to join, but I cant be arsed to get a costume together.

[Whitewolf]

Fools and Heroes?

[2potscreama]

Fools and Heroes is the 'official' Live Roleplaying group in the UK.

Basically, you dress up in armor and give each other a beasting with foam weapons.

There's supposed to be a plot to it, but mainly people go for the chance to hit someone with a 3ft sword and not get arrested.

Ah, the good old days. I remember them like they were only... about 5 years ago, lol.

Ronish is the written script.

[Whitewolf]

lol.
Bashing people with foam weapons?
So,how did they calculate damage?

[2potscreama]

Well, each part of your body is a 'location' (left arm, right arm, chest, head, etc).
Each 'location' has 1 Hit Point.

Any armor worn adds to the total hit points for a given location. Soft leather +1, hard leather +2, chainmail +3, etc.

Weapons do a specific amount of damage, based on weapon type and your characters skill with that weapon.
So a dagger will do 1 point of damage, whereas a huge great halberd will do 3 or 4.

When you strike another player, you call how much damage your weapon does. Since you can actually see what armor that person is wearing, you can do your own maths as to the result of the strike.

When you are wounded (ie, any location is knocked to zero) that body location becomes useless. So, if you hit someone in the leg and wounded them, they would either be limping quite badly or totally crippled, depending on the severity of the blow. (eg, a '4' hit against an unarmed limb, and you can usually wave goodbye to that appendage)

Hits against your chest and head render you unconcious. (or take your head clean off, again depending on the severity of the blow)

Any wound not 'treated' (a player character doctor type dude sticks a bandage on it) within 5 minutes becomes permanent, unless its on your head or chest. If a head or chest wound isnt treated, you die.

It sounds complicated, but it works 90% of the time.

[Whitewolf]

ooo,sounds interesting.
I wonder if they have it here....

[2potscreama]

Theres loads of LARP groups across the world. So there's got to be one in Germany.

Rules obviously differ from place to place, country to country, but it's cool if you can be bothered to stick with it.

Over here, if you buy your costume, weapon, etc brand new, it'll set you back about £300.

You can make it yourself, but it seldom looks as good as the professionally done stuff.

Here's wee example of what the really expensive kit looks like...

http://www.eclipse.co.uk/KinCheap/img/armour.gif

[Whitewolf]

Ouch!
Well,it might be hard to find a group here,but it's worth a try!
The price tag alone would discourage most people here.

[2potscreama]

Well like I said, that price tag is only for the really nice looking kit.

You can usually throw a costume together yourself for considerably less than that.

[Whitewolf]

Wow,that's a nice set o' armour!
Seems worth it for that price.