Solutions for Aging Eyes

SecurityDude, CISSP-ISSAP is an IT consultant, Security & Privacy Advocate and blogger at large with over 20 years IT experience.

If you happen to be older than say “36″ (like me), it is likely that reading 6 point type on a web page rendered at 1600×1080 is going to be either impossible, or uncomfortable. I like my eyes a LOT, so when I learned a new trick to make things easier to read on my computer screen, I told just about everyone. I would like to share the tip with our readers.

I learned this entirely by accident. I was at a web site and was preparing to copy some highlighted text with a Ctrl-C. Well, I had already pressed the Ctrl key and used my mouse’s scroll wheel to move the text up. Instead of moving the text, it resized the text. I found out that not all web sites are structured in a way this works, but many do. I have found this procedure also works to change font size in Microsoft Office applications. If you try it right now, it should work on this web page.

Try by pressing Ctrl and scrolling down to increase the size of the text, and pressing the Ctrl button and scrolling up to decrease the size of the text. Results may vary with each mouse, as we only did this with Microsft mice.

If you happen to own a Microsoft Wireless Notebook mouse, you might have noticed the small button near the place your right thumb rests. If you install the IntelliPoint software, that button turns on an adjustable on-screen magnifier (to use on the web sites that Ctrl-Scroll doesn’t work).

Be nice to your eyes. Don’t squint, resize.