IE7 Accessibility: Magnification
It just occurred to me that the new Internet Explorer 7 ships with a zoom tool.
In other/older browsers (even the new Firefox 2 which was just released yesterday) zoom can only achieved natively by increasing or decreasing the text size – and that is only if the text size is not written in pixels.
IE7 still have the old text size in-/decrease functionality but have also added a regular zoom tool:
This zoom feature zooms everything without distortion – not only text. This means, text, images, forms, layout – the works.
They have even changed the keyboard shortcuts so that the keyboard shortcuts that previously activated text size in-/decrease now activates page zoom. If you have IE 7 installed, try to pres Ctrl + or Ctrl – or even just holding down the Ctrl button while scrolling your mouse-wheel.
For some reason though, some pages whose text previously in- and decreased fine in IE6 now don’t in IE7. But who needs that when we got zoom?
Technorati Tags: ie7, accessibility, magnification, browser, internet explorer
October 25th, 2006 at 19:39 (GMT-1)
That feature has been in Opera for loooong time. Beside that does Mac OS X have a feature where you can zoom in where the mouse is, and the zoom is followed when you move the mouse.
October 25th, 2006 at 19:51 (GMT-1)
I agree with Jesper.
I was quite amazed when I first saw it in Opera and that’s something I miss in Firefox (2.0 doesn’t come with it either) so, I’m pleased with that feature in IE7.
It doesn’t mean that I will browse with IE7 of course! It’s still far from opera or Firefox.
October 25th, 2006 at 20:48 (GMT-1)
Sad to say that I do not own a Mac (Jacob, are you reading this?) – so I haven’t tried out Safari. Also nice to hear Opera has been leading the team on this one.
When I showed this to a colleague he said “Wonder who they stole that from”. Now we know :)
November 8th, 2006 at 11:51 (GMT-1)
Related reading: Browser zoom comparison by Alistair C
November 30th, 2007 at 23:43 (GMT-1)
Have you seen any issues with accessibility keys and dotnetnuke? We’ve managed to get the access keys working for every browser but IE 7.
Any thoughts?
April 14th, 2008 at 05:05 (GMT-1)
IE8 Beta 1 has a better than IE7 Zoom tool. Take a look…
August 28th, 2008 at 15:26 (GMT-1)
I used that tool a lot, just so you guys know, it is available in Firefox also!
August 31st, 2008 at 23:29 (GMT-1)
That is a great tool, I teached my parents to use it and it helps them a lot because of the tired eyes!
September 3rd, 2008 at 21:51 (GMT-1)
The magnification is great for when you forget your glasses and can make out the letters!