Font size in topic preview window is larger than it was

[alex]

Using Flare 7.2, when I click the Preview button in the XML editor, the font size of the text appears to be much larger than it used to be. I don't know of anything I did that could have caused this to change, but topics I previewed and printed even last week look "normal" (i.e., the text size is about 10pts), while what I'm seeing right now looks like 14 or 16 pts.

I'm curious if anyone else has ever noticed this happening, or if anyone has any ideas on how I can "force" my preview to go back to showing me the topic with the font sizes how they're actually supposed to look when generated.

I've made no changes to stylesheets or styles or project settings (this is WebHelp). My Font Scale setting hasn't changed (it's still set to 100%). I just all of a sudden see big font sizes, and it's a bit odd.

Thanks,
Alex

[lacastle]

have you tried closing Flare and opening again, or rebooting your computer?

[alex]

Yes and yes.

[LTinker68]

Is the text in the Flare GUI itself larger, too? If so, did you check the resolution of your monitor to make sure it's still 96dpi?

Also, does the output look fine in other browsers, like Firefox? If it does, try the compiled output in IE. If it's large in IE but not Firefox, then check the Internet Options to see if you either specified that your styles override styles in the website or if you specified font sizes in the Internet Options (I believe you can do that). The Flare Preview window utilizes IE, so that's why it might look different, if indeed something was changed in the Internet Options screens.

[alex]

The text in the Preview window is large. The text in the Flare XML editor is the correct size. Monitor resolution is the same. We only use IE, so I can't test on other browsers.

I checked with a colleague to run some "apples-to-apples" tests on a few topics and in different Flare projects. In one of the projects, we saw the same results - the correct "small" sizes. In two other projects, his Preview and output were the correct size, while mine were large, even though the sizes were correct in the XML editor.

Stylesheets are identical. No manual overrides are set to use "my" settings.

Some thoughts to toss out there - could it have anything to do with my graphics/video? I have another issue in Flare 7.2 that my colleague does not ever see in his projects: the print (folder names, topic names, project files, etc.) in the left pane (Project Explorer and Content Explorer) looks like double vision for a few seconds and "hangs" before correctly displaying. Additionally, I recently allowed my Adobe reader to update to X, while I believe he is still on an older version. I'm reaching at this point, but nothing about this makes sense, so who knows...

Thanks for the tips and things to check. I welcome any other thoughts.

11-7-2011 4-31-53 PM.gif

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[LTinker68]

Some thoughts to toss out there - could it have anything to do with my graphics/video?

I would expect the behavior to be the same from topic to topic, but if there's something in those particular topics that aren't in the others (script, specific style class, etc.), then it might be something to do with the video card, but I'd put that at a very low probability.

Can the colleague log into your computer using his credentials and test the output from your computer? If it still looks fine for him, then it implies it's something you've set somewhere on the computer that affects only your profile. If it doesn't look fine for him either, then it could be something else on the computer that all profiles would share, like the version of .NET, installed fonts, etc.

[alex]

We are looking at exactly the same topics in each of the projects for the apples-to-apples comparisons.

There are absolutely no differences within the code itself, which is why I started reaching for possible PC hardware/video/graphic/driver/display issues being the culprit.

The fact that I have the double-vision effect all the time, all day long, in every project, and he never sees this happen, no matter what, suggests to me that perhaps there is something wrong in my PC. I had our internal support IT people look at it, and they had no idea what could be causing that to happen, either.

Thanks for the suggestions!

[LTinker68]

Did this just start happening, or has it always been that way since you installed Flare v7? You could try re-installing .NET. If there were a problem with the video card, it seems like you'd see something happening in other applications, not just Flare. But Flare is built on the .NET platform and your other apps might not be, so it could be contributing to the problem. The only other thing is to reset the window layout, which might help with the ghosting if the GUI somehow got into a weird state. Not sure if it would help with the larger font in the Preview window, though.

At this point I'm just throwing out ideas.

[SteveS]

While we throwing out ideas...

Try pressing ctrl and the + or - key at the same time to resize the text in the offending window. (The ctrl and scroll wheel has the same effect). They may be a text zooming effect happening.

HTH

[alex]

While we throwing out ideas...

Try pressing ctrl and the + or - key at the same time to resize the text in the offending window. (The ctrl and scroll wheel has the same effect). They may be a text zooming effect happening.

HTH

This does not appear to work in the Flare Preview window, but thank you for the suggestion.

Did this just start happening, or has it always been that way since you installed Flare v7? You could try re-installing .NET. If there were a problem with the video card, it seems like you'd see something happening in other applications, not just Flare. But Flare is built on the .NET platform and your other apps might not be, so it could be contributing to the problem. The only other thing is to reset the window layout, which might help with the ghosting if the GUI somehow got into a weird state. Not sure if it would help with the larger font in the Preview window, though.

At this point I'm just throwing out ideas.

There are strange display-related issues occurring in other applications, as well. I just kept the focus on Flare because at first I thought there was something going wrong here that could be causing problems elsewhere. I reached for the video card or Adobe Reader X as possibilities, as I have 1/2 the video memory that my colleague has, and Adobe Reader X was the only thing I've changed on my PC in the last week or so, and I did notice some very odd screen redraws happening in the Adobe Reader window while displaying the PDF output of a Flare target.

I've been working with Internal Support here, so I'll report back when we resolve this. I think reinstalling software might be next.

Thank you again for all of the suggestions.