Moved to Thunderbird from emClient but reached one critical stumbling block with Zooming of message window
Hi,
I am currently trying to setup my Thunderbird and all is going pretty well apart from one really sill little issue that I can't seem to get over. When I go into "Write" to create a new email I am finding that I always need to zoom the view to see what I am writing. This is not a problem with the font size. I have set my fonts correctly for both HTML and text type mails to Calibri 12pt and this is being recieved by people just fine in the correct font and size. This is just the zoom level of the emails (both to read and to create/write a new email that is too small for my resolution and screen. I don't have any special screen or resoulution and every other application looks just fine. It is only Thunderbird message pane. The iconds and menus are all fine in thunderbird too.
Every single time I go to read an email or create a new email I have to go through the song and dance of pressing CTRL+ three times to zoom up the window to an acceptable level. If I only had to do this once and if Thunderbird remembered it all would be well but I have to do it every single time I create a new email.
It is making thunderbird totally unusable for me. I saw there was an addon called AutoZoom but that is not working with my release of TB (78.1.1).
I just don't get why it would not be designed to remember the zoom level from last time - it makes not sense to me at all and I am quite exasperated.
What am I doing wrong ???
There is one other really annoying thing I wanted to ask about too. If I write some date like "5th June" in an email the "th" bit is always underlined like the spell check logic has no concept that a number with th or rd after should be treated as a data and not a spelling error. Is this fixable in my settings somehow? I am using the English (UK) Dictionary
Thanks all.
Paul
Modified by Paul
All Replies (2)
Lets start with a correction. Font's in Thunderbird are set in pixels not points so you have set them about 30% smaller than you intend is my guess. SO fix the font size and perhaps zooming will be a thing of the past.
Hi Matt,
Thanks so much for that. I did not know that and I have learned something new. I am using my learnings (as I have realised I need to learn some more about thunderbird) and have written the below "quick tips guide" (as a work in progress) for me and my family/friends for the future so that they can understand this concept in their type of "speak". I would be really grateful if you could cast an eye over it and make any suggestions for additions/changes. The one thing I was not sure about is that if you send a message in plain text to a person then where do you set the default font size for that (as the section where I am guiding them to set the email sending font size is headed "HTML style".
I hope I haven't got it all totally wrong :-)
Setting up Thunderbird
1. If the whole interface to TB looks a little small for your eyes and screen setup then you can make the whole DPI setting (fonts/buttons/windows/icons) larger by going to options > search for config and open “Config Editor”. In Config Editor, search for layout.css.devPixelsPerPx and set this value to 1.1, 1.2 or 1.5, etc. as you wish.
2. Once this is set the way you like you next should setup your email account as usual and then compose a message. At this stage you should look at the writing pane and see if the sizes of the fonts look good for you and your particular screen resolution/size. It’s important to do this AFTER the step 1 above.
Background: Please note that the font sizes in Thunderbird are handled in a different way to other programs such as Word. They are split into two individual elements. The display size for you in the interface/eyes and the size of the font that will actually be sent to people in the email you are composing. If you look at another popular program (Word for example), the fonts are set using “points” or “pt” and the font you set will appear larger or smaller depending on the device (and the resolution of that device) that a given user uses when looking at your document – even though it’s the same “pt” value. For example, if you set the font in Word to “Times New Roman” and 20pt then the font may look fine for you on a large screen and your poor eyes but to a friend using a smaller screen with 20/20 vision and a lower resolution the 20pt font may look huge and unreadable.
3. In Thunderbird the font size for HTML emails (the actual sending font) is defined under Options > Composition > HTML Style and can be “Tiny” through to “Huge”. You would be best leaving this on “Medium” for most emails and then in the composing window if you want to set a larger sending font for a particular email (or even just some text elements within an email) then you can change the size there; always using the “Tiny……..Huge” scale.
The font sizes as they are displayed to you in the actual compose window are independent of this setting so, once you have set your default sending font size you may wish to change the “view” font size for your specific monitor to further refine the interface for your requirements. This is done under Options > General > Language & Appearance > Fonts and Colours > Advanced. You need to select a value here that suits your needs for all elements under “Fonts For - Other Writing Systems” and also “Fonts For - Latin” (or if you write in another language style, perhaps some others under “Fonts For”. I set mine larger for my poor eyesight (20 for all values under both). This effectively gives me a good zoom level for me to work with but does not affect the actual font size that people will receive in their emails. This value is in “pixels” (“px”) and not in “points” (“pt”). If you are having a bad day or if you get an email that has “tiny” fonts then you can simply use the [ctrl] and + / - keys to adjust your view (zoom level) for a given message. Note that this settings is not retained and is only for one email at the one time you are looking at it.
Modified by Paul