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:

Screenshot showing the Internet Explorer 7 zoom functionality

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?

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9 Responses to “IE7 Accessibility: Magnification”

  1. Jesper Laursen Says:

    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.

  2. sasaeh Says:

    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.

  3. Thomas Watson Steen Says:

    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 :)

  4. Jesper Rønn-Jensen Says:

    Related reading: Browser zoom comparison by Alistair C

  5. Eric Peerless Says:

    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?

  6. Mega Bonus Says:

    IE8 Beta 1 has a better than IE7 Zoom tool. Take a look…

  7. Carvoeiro in Portugal Says:

    I used that tool a lot, just so you guys know, it is available in Firefox also!

  8. Voos Baratos Says:

    That is a great tool, I teached my parents to use it and it helps them a lot because of the tired eyes!

  9. Cartao de Credito Says:

    The magnification is great for when you forget your glasses and can make out the letters!