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Text in drop-down lists is much too small, just a few pixels in height. Almost impossible to read.

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  • Last reply by JWH

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I buy parts from mouser.com. There are a couple of places where they provide a drop-down list so you can choose from the list. One example is the "Online Quote Request Form" page:

https://www.mouser.com/quote/quote.aspx

There is a " Company Type:" question where there is a text box with a drop-down list that has 18 choices. With Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, this drop-down list has text that is the same size as other text on the page and easy to read. With Firefox 67.0a1 (2019-02-26) (64-bit) in Windows 10, the text in the drop-down list is only a few pixels in height and almost impossible to read. There are barely enough pixels to figure it out. The text size in the box itself is OK, it is just when you access the drop-down list that everything is way too small. I have tried setting the minimum font size to 17 and also tried setting it to no minimum. When I set it to no minimum, the entire web page is displayed in text that is only a few pixels in height. I tried changing fonts, but that did not help. I tried turning off the "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above" feature, but there was no change, on or off.

I would send a screen shot, but the drop-down box disappears when I leave the window to select the snipping tool in Windows 10.

Thank you.

I buy parts from mouser.com. There are a couple of places where they provide a drop-down list so you can choose from the list. One example is the "Online Quote Request Form" page: https://www.mouser.com/quote/quote.aspx There is a " Company Type:" question where there is a text box with a drop-down list that has 18 choices. With Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, this drop-down list has text that is the same size as other text on the page and easy to read. With Firefox 67.0a1 (2019-02-26) (64-bit) in Windows 10, the text in the drop-down list is only a few pixels in height and almost impossible to read. There are barely enough pixels to figure it out. The text size in the box itself is OK, it is just when you access the drop-down list that everything is way too small. I have tried setting the minimum font size to 17 and also tried setting it to no minimum. When I set it to no minimum, the entire web page is displayed in text that is only a few pixels in height. I tried changing fonts, but that did not help. I tried turning off the "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above" feature, but there was no change, on or off. I would send a screen shot, but the drop-down box disappears when I leave the window to select the snipping tool in Windows 10. Thank you.

Chosen solution

Hi JWHardy, using a minimum font size above 9 or 10 can distort the layout because (unless something has changed in Nightly), the layout still is based on the actual font size. It is more reliable to use zoom to enlarge all text on the page proportionally. For example, hold down the Ctrl key and tap the + key a few times to enlarge, or the - key to reduce.

Firefox has a global scaling factor to size text across the interface and web content. If you would also like to increase the text size in the toolbar area, that could be worth investigating. This thread has more info: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1239467

Any progress so far?

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Hi JWHardy, using a minimum font size above 9 or 10 can distort the layout because (unless something has changed in Nightly), the layout still is based on the actual font size. It is more reliable to use zoom to enlarge all text on the page proportionally. For example, hold down the Ctrl key and tap the + key a few times to enlarge, or the - key to reduce.

Firefox has a global scaling factor to size text across the interface and web content. If you would also like to increase the text size in the toolbar area, that could be worth investigating. This thread has more info: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1239467

Any progress so far?

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Your suggestion seems to work. Now that I have used the "Zoom in" feature (many clicks to get sufficient zooming), the main text on the page is a good size, and the text in the drop-down list is about the same good size. I don't see any other side effects so far. I will keep tweaking the zoom factor and text sizes, etc., but things are good now. If I see any side-effects, I'll get back to you.

I would not have suspected the zoom factor to be so far off. Perhaps I accidentally un-zoomed it at some point. Who knows.

Nor would I have suspected that the main text on the page and the text in drop-down lists would be so independent from each other and capable of being such different sizes.

A different but almost identical computer system (Windows 10, very recent version of Firefox) does not have this problem.

Thank you very much.

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Note that you may have accidentally zoomed web page(s). Reset the page zoom on pages that cause problems.

  • View -> Zoom -> Reset (Ctrl+0/Command+0 (zero))

You can look at Zoom Page WE and NoSquint Plus extension to set a default font size and page zoom on web pages.

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I don't know how my Firefox became so zoomed out. But it is now zoomed in, many steps of zooming in to get things looking right. Thank you for the suggestions regarding extensions. I'll check them out.