Ever need to zoom in on your display, as a presenter or just while reading?
Whether you're a presenter or just someone who struggles reading small type on a web page or within some tool on on your entire desktop, there are at least two useful (and easy) solutions you should know about. One solution is built into the latest browsers (Firefox 2, IE 7, and Safari), while another is a free lightweight tool useful for all apps.
With the browsers, just use Ctrl+ or Ctrl-. This works for me in IE7, Firefox 2.0.0.6, and Safari for Windows 3.0.3. Additionally, in IE 7, you'll even see a small magnifying glass and "%" indicator in the lower right corner, which offers a menu of settings. I don't use a mouse, but I've heard that at least in IE hold down the Ctrl key while you use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out.
But what about outside the browser? Well, again, I'm a windows guy, and I can recommend at least a free lightweight tool called ZoomIt, from the SysInternals team (now a part of Microsoft). Once you run it, you can set hotkeys to control zooming in/out. Where the browser approach zooms in the entire display of the page being viewed, ZoomIt instead zooms in on whatever area of the screen you're pointing at when you use it. It even adds a nifty Timer mode to show a countdown clock, as another help to presenters. Get it, and learn more, at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Miscellaneous/ZoomIt.mspx.
Of course, these tools can help those needing magnification due to sight impairment. Then, there are other tools that may better suit that requirement, such as the Windows Magnifier (Start>Programs>Accessories>Accessibility>Magnifier). That doesn't work quite as well (in my experience) for a presenter.
And I'm sure my Mac friends will tell me that all this has been built into that OS from day one and we Windows folks are just picking up scraps off their table. That's ok. I'm just one beggar helping other beggars, then. :-)
About the browser zoom feature, I've just observed that while IE 7 truly
zooms in the whole page (images and text), Firefox and Safari instead only
increase the text font size. Still useful. Also, to return the fonts to
normal size in FF and Safari, use ctrl-0. It doesn't seem to work in IE7.
I only recently discovered (quite by accident), that various MS apps in
Windows can be zoomed while using the mouse and CTRL key, Very handy for
switching between full page and page width in Word, for example.