Tag Archives: safari

Font size bookmarklets

Last night I was reading some online documentation on Safari on my iPad and was annoyed by the small font size. On most web sites, the text is formatted in narrow columns and you just double tap to zoom in perfectly. In this case that wouldn’t work well because the text spans from edge to edge on the site. You’ve probably bumped into a similar situation on your iPhone or iPad.

This morning I looked around for a solution. I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for ; but I combined and modified some of the things I found and created two bookmarklets: one that increases the font size of the page you are in, and one that decreases it.

There are two ways to install them.

Method A

If you use iCloud to synchronize bookmarks between Safari on your Mac or PC and your iPhone/iPad, then the easiest way is to do this from your computer. Just drag the two links below to your Bookmarks Bar.

Let iCloud take care of the syncing for you.

Method B

If you need to do this from your iPhone/iPad because you don’t use iCloud for syncing bookmarks, then things are a little harder. I won’t describe the process here because others have already done a great job. The only difference is that you will use the code from my bookmarklets:

Font-:

javascript:var p=document.getElementsByTagName('*');for(i=0;i<p.length;i++){if(p[i].style.fontSize){var s=parseInt(p[i].style.fontSize.replace("px",""));}else{var s=12;}s-=2;p[i].style.fontSize=s+"px"}

Font+:

javascript:var p=document.getElementsByTagName('*');for(i=0;i<p.length;i++){if(p[i].style.fontSize){var s=parseInt(p[i].style.fontSize.replace("px",""));}else{var s=12;}s+=2;p[i].style.fontSize=s+"px"}

Once you have installed the bookmarklets, use them the same way you use a bookmark. I recommend putting them on the Bookmarks Bar for quick access, as shown:

Bookmarklets on iPad

This is how the original website looks:

Original font size

And this is how it looks after increasing the font size a couple of times:

After increasing the font size using the bookmarklet.

In order to reset the font size back to its default, just reload! Hope you find this useful.

The Browser Wars III

I wanted to see how the readers of The MKX® compare to the rest of the world once again. We have compiled statistics in 2006 and 2009, so might as well check again.



Browser Internet
June 2011
The MKX®
April 2006
The MKX®
Dec 2009
The MKX®
July 2011
Explorer 54% 59.32% 38.57% 23.03%
Firefox 21.67% 27.12% 34.84% 28.73%
Safari 7.48% 9.32% 18.55% 13.00%
Chrome 13.11% No data 5.68% 28.94%
Opera 2.98% 2.54% 0.49% 1.95%
Other 1% 2% 2% 4%

That’s right: The #1 browser around here is now Google Chrome, then Firefox, then IE (warning – disturbing domain name), and then Safari, who’s share has disturbingly fallen since we last checked in spite of growing in the Internet as a whole. A mystery.

Pilansberg safari

Yestarday was one of our “no game” days, so we headed out to Pilansberg park for a safari. It’s about three hours away from Johannesburg.

In the safari, you just basically drive around yourself trying to spot animals. We got to see zebras, warthogs, one elephant, rhinoceros, etc. All the photos you see below were taken by us – it was truly beautiful. The rhinos were by far the coolest. They walked by us only a couple of meters away. They are some scary beasts, man.

To make things extra fun, I hit a pretty nasty pothole on the way back that blew our tire. Not until then was the adventure truly complete.

The Browser Wars II

About three and a half years ago I took a look at the browser usage statistics here in The MKX®. A lot has happened since: Safari came out for Windows, mobile browsing finally became usable with the iPhone, and Google released a fast new browser called Chrome. I think it’s about time we take another look:

Browser Internet Q4 2009
(by Net Applications)
The MKX®
April 2006
The MKX®
December 2009
Internet Explorer 64% 59.32% 38.57%
Firefox 24.44% 27.12% 34.84%
Safari 4.40% 9.32% 18.55%
Chrome 3.82% No data 5.68%
Opera 2.25% 2.54% 0.49%
Netscape 0.31% 0.85% No data

pie

Conclusions:

  • Firefox, Safari usage keeps climbing.
  • Internet Explorer use is declining.
  • Chrome came out of nowhere and in a few months has a respectable number of users (myself included).
  • People who don’t use Internet Explorer are smarter and better looking. Thus, in average, our readers are smarter and better looking than the rest of the world.
  • Opera is dying a slow, painful death.

As an interesting not, now 2.75% of all our visits are from an iPhone or iPod touch. Thanks for reading.

Browser comparison

Safari 4 just came out of beta. I gave it a try at my work computer (a Windows XP machine) just to go back to Chrome shortly after. Now I’m back with Safari. The main reason? Text rendering. See, in Safari you can configure the browser to render its text like Mac OS X does. In my opinion, text looks a lot better in Mac OS X than it does in Windows. Sure, it’s a matter of taste; my excellent taste versus other people’s terrible taste.

To illustrate my point, I took a screenshot of the Facebook homepage. Why? Because it shows text in the English, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabet. You’ll see how Safari’s text looks much better. From left to right: Apple Safari 4, Google Chrome 2.0, Mozilla Firefox 3.0,and MS Internet Explorer 7.0:

browser-comparison
Web browser comparison on Windows XP: Safari 4, Google Chrome 2.0, Mozilla Firefox 3.0, and MS Internet Explorer 7.0 (click to zoom)

What do you think? Which one do you like better?

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Safari 4 beta

overview-hero-image3-20090217

The good people at Apple released Safari 4 beta yesterday. For those not in the know, Safari is Apple‘s web browser. According to the traffic analysis for The MKX® (more on that sometime next month), a large amount of readers are still using Internet Explorer.

At home, I’ve been using Safari for years. Before that I used Camino. At work, I had been using Firefox, but switched to Google Chrome a few months ago and liked it very much. Now I’m giving the new Safari 4 a spin both at home and at work. Call me a browser slut if you’d like, I’ve been known to use iCab and the now free Omniweb in the past, and even IE for Mac back in the Mac OS 8 days.

I like it so far. For example, on Windows I can make the fonts look like they do on the Mac: much better – but perhaps a personal preference… from someone with better taste. I also like the new tabs (heavily borrowed from Chrome) and the fact that it will sync my bookmarks with my home computers and iPhone through my MobileMe account.

You can download it and test it here.