A Userscript to allow page zooming and text enlargment in Opera on the Gadget Detective website.
Current Version: 1.0 Released on the 26th of February 2008.
This page lets you save a Javascript file that can be used with the Opera Web Browser to alter the size of the Gadget Detective website. It works by adding some extra HTML to the website that displays a little toolbar from which you can click some buttons to alter the width and height of the site. (See the video for a demonstration)
As some visitors will have noticed, the size of the text is dynamically linked to the width of the browser and on smaller screens or browsers with side panels displayed it can result in the text being too small to read, at least for some eyes. Unfortunately nothing can really be done to fix the problem because the host doesn't allow Fevzi to alter the HTML or Javascript on the web server, however Opera users can make use of a workaround thanks to that browser's Userscript functionality. This allows users to run their own Javascript on other peoples' websites which can be incredibly useful!
The file below was created in order to allow the Gadget Detective site to be resized regardless of the browser size. The only side effect of this is that you end up having to side scroll, so in that respect it behaves identically to zooming normal pages in IE7, but at least you can easily read the text once you've zoomed in. Because of the layout of the site, scrolling doesn't matter too much anyway because you can usually scroll the navigation column out of view and still view the messageboards in full.
Unfortunately, userscript is yet another feature Internet Explorer is lacking so there's little that can be done to help most people, but there seem to be a few Opera users who frequent the Gadget Detective site, and this script might be of use to them. Firefox users can achieve similar things but the Javascript needs to be coded a little differently, and each user must first download an extension before it can run. Opera does it all out of the box making distrubuting and using this file more practicable.
To get it to work, simply right click on the following link and use the "Save target as..." option to save the file to a folder somewhere. You can use this folder to store other scripts for other websites if you like. After saving the file open Opera's settings and specify this folder as the location of your userscripts and Opera will automatically add the resizing bar to the Gadget Detective site every time you visit it.
Full instructions and more information is written inside the file itself, so just open it in a plain text editor for more. Be careful not to edit the file or alter it in any way in a word processor otherwise it may become corrupted to Opera. You can find out more about userscripts on the Opera website.
The script only allows the user to resize the website and nothing else. Feedback is welcome (anyone want any changes made?) but due to the site being wrapped in Flash, there's very little else that can be done with it other than resizing it. Userscript certainly wouldn't allow Fevzi to convert the site into normal HTML automatically or make URLs posted in messages to be clickable as links like userscripts can with normal web pages.
I hope this file is of use to any Opera users on the Gadget Detective site, a website I've been browsing since it was first plugged on a Saturday morning a long time ago!
Download the Gadget Detective Userscript File Here!
Once you've installed this script, reload the Gadget Detective site (no need to restart Opera) and check for a new bar at the top of the site.
You can learn more about userscripts and find many more ready-made files for a wide variety of purposes from the following sites:
Fevzi Turkalp appears as the Gadget Detective during the Mike Mendoza radio show on TalkSPORT 1053-1089. You can hear the Gadget Detective slot every Friday night/Saturday morning at 2am.
This site, and the Gadget Detective zoom script it was created to share, was created by a regular contributer to the Gadget Detective forums who saw the need for a text enlargement script and wrote one. It was not created by Fevzi Turkalp, Mike Mendoza or TalkSPORT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ GADGET DETECTIVE FIXED-WIDTH WEBSITE SCRIPT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ VERSION: 1.0 PUBLISHED: 26/02/08 FEEDBACK: talksport at operamail dot com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION: Use this Opera Web Browser user-Javascript file to force a fixed display width for the Flash-based Gadget Detective website. The website uses a Flash wrapper to display all content, however the text size is dynamically linked to the display width, resulting in tiny font sizes being rendered when the browser viewport is narrower than 1000px. Due to the flash wrapper and the relative width of the wrapper, conventional accessibility mechanisms such as zooming or text-size adjustment do not work in normal graphical browsers. This User-Javascript will allow those browsing the site in Opera to select a fixed width for the Flash wrapper and therefore maintain a larger font size, albeit at the expense of scrolling. Additionally, two modes are available to Match the site to either the width or height of the viewport, something that is also likely to require scrolling in one direction because of the locked aspect ratio used by the Flash file. Sadly, nothing an be done to 'fix' that. Still, a little side-scrolling is better than ilegable fonts! To use this script, simply drop it into your User-Javascript folder, as defined in Opera's settings: 1. From the Tools Menu, select Preferences. 2. In the dialogue that appears, go to the Advanced tab. 3. Move down to the Content settings. 4. Click on the Javascript Options button to bring up another dialogue. 5. Choose the folder where Opera should look for User-Javascript files. The next time you visit the Gadget Detective site in Opera 8 or above you will have more control over the display width. No restart is required but you might have to reload the website before you see the effects of this script. To stop the script from working, simply delete this file or move it out of the folder. This script currently doesn't remember your settings when you leave the Gadget Detective website. This is because the only way to allow this has the potential to cause other problems with the website. If a perfectly safe solution is discovered, and is wanted by, then it might be included in a future version. Sadly there is no simple fix for MSIE, though complicated Firewall/proxy setups would allow boffins to override the display of the site if they wanted. Firefox users should be able to replicate the effects of this script for the Mozilla Greasemonkey extension, however the code will need to be tweaked and all other Firefox users will be required to go and install extra extensions before they can share the script. Opera does it all out of the box which makes sharing/applying this script much more convenient.