I would like to have a "zoom" option in the web browser that works like the zoom option in Microsoft Word. When used, everything in the window, fonts, graphics, buttons, etc. get resized larger or smaller. This would allow you to reduce the size of the browser window without losing any content or reformatting the content.

Currently when you resize the window in Internet Explorer and Netscape, the images, tables, and buttons stay the same size and the text is rewrapped to the new size, creating an awkward distorted version of the page. And if you make the window too small, graphics and tables are no fully longer visible.

Instead of having to choose a zoom-to size, I would propose just turning the feature on or off. When turned off, the browser would behave as it does now. When turned on, resizing the browser window causes the contents to shrink or grow instead of rewrapping text.

To see what this might look like. Capture a screen (Alt-PrtSc), paste it into a graphics editor tool and resize it. I have found that the text and images are quite readable until you get down to about 25% of the original size.

So I know this could be done. But I have never heard anyone else mention it. Searching the web, I found something called a "Zooming Web Browser" but it is something completely unrelated.
-- willatlguy, Feb 14 2002

Opera, the fastest web browser in the west. http://www.opera.com/
zooms text and graphics but not embedded objects. (yet) [st3f, Feb 14 2002]

(?) Not baked, but I found some dough... http://msdn.microso...properties/zoom.asp
The technology's already in the browsers (at least in IE5.5 and up, thanks to a Microsoft CSS extension). [magnificat, Apr 06 2002]

Not baked, but I found some dough..., part II http://www.dynamicd...amicindex3/zoom.htm
A working sample of a sort of virtual magnifying glass. IE5.5 and up only. Shouldn't be hard to set this to work on an entire page. [magnificat, Apr 06 2002]

I'm surprised it hasn't been done. It's a good idea. You can open a Web page in Word and zoom if you want, though. I know, I just tried it.
-- bristolz, Feb 14 2002


Browsers would be even bigger than they are now.

Plus there may be some content that's not resizable (I'm thinking Shockwave and Flash files - JPEG, GIF, etc shouldn't be a problem).
-- phoenix, Feb 14 2002


phoenix, do you think that would add a lot of size to the footprint?  Would the code burden of adding a scaling routine to the renderer be very big? True, plug-in renderers may be a problem, as you say. Isn't one of the Flash hallmarks vector-like scalability?
-- bristolz, Feb 14 2002


Of course, RT. You are right and I should have thought of that.
-- bristolz, Feb 14 2002


But you didn't. Oh the shame. New Opera version has come out, I'm waiting until they get shortfalls with DHTML/Java apps corrected - too many.
-- thumbwax, Feb 14 2002


Well, anything would be an improvement on the existing IE "View|Text Size" thing. Although the pixel is a standard unit in web page design, there's no reason that a logical pixel has to equal an actual screen pixel. And -- despite what phoenix thinks -- scaling up or down should add minimal complexity (though obviously plug-ins have their own rendering engines, and would need to be interfaced with). Many browsers can already scale images (if you get the size attributes wrong.)
-- pottedstu, Feb 14 2002


How would absolutely positioned <div>s etc work, when you change the scale of the page?
-- mcscotland, Feb 14 2002


If it works the way pottedstu is suggesting the browser would zoom the contents of the browser window scaling pixel dimensions appropriately. (html may say 10px but the browser translates to 15px because you're zoomed at 150%)
-- st3f, Feb 14 2002


I have never tried Opera. I guess I'll have to try it out. But it sounds like it has a few problems.
-- willatlguy, Apr 06 2002


Any new version of any browser has problems. You should try it.
-- thumbwax, Apr 06 2002



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