Netscape problems (fwd)

[dmartin at LanCity.COM (Derek Martin)]

On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, John Abreau wrote:

> I don't know if these are the kinds of questions I should send to
> everyone in the newsgroup or not.  Maybe you could shed some light on
> this.

Sure, that's what we're here for.

> 1) While I can browse the internet with the Navigator window, when I
> choose Messenger to go to download messages, it crashes Netscape (all
> netscape windows just disappear from my desktop). Have you heard of
> this problem before, or can you point me to a resource where I might
> find some help?

Well, there is a problem with RedHat 6.0's font server RPM that is known
to cause problems with Netscape, though I have not heard of this
particular problem being associated with it.  Apparently, it is common to
find pages with Javascript that cause Netscape to crash because of this
problem.  If your problem is related to this, you should be able to fix it
with this command (as root):

  chkfontpath --add /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi

Please let me know if this fixed the problem...

> 
> 2) The second problem I have is with the Navigator window in
> communicator. The problem lies in that when I go to websites, the
> fonts on the page I see are so small that I cannot read them, and when
> I use Edit Preferences to change the fonts to the other ones there, it
> just doesn't seem to help.
> 

I think the problem here is more one of web developers not being concious
of differing user environments when viewing web pages...  Often web pages
are designed with Windows users in mind, since (unfortunately) those PC's
with windows make up the largest portion of the web-viewing audience. The
X-windows system's fonts do not always translate well on some web pages
designed to be viewed on windows machines.

But I will say this:  if you experiment with your fonts long enough, you
should be able to find something that looks o.k. on your linux machine.
If you are having real trouble reading your web pages, you can try setting
your fonts to Helvetica 18 pt. or even 24 pt. (for the variable font) and
courier 18 or 24 for the fixed width.  Some pages will disregard your
settings, since the font face and size is specified, but you should be
able to override that by selecting "use my default fonts, overriding
document-specified fonts." 
 

*******************************
|       Derek D. Martin       |
|  UNIX System Administrator  |
| derek.martin at ne.arris-i.com |
*******************************

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