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My websites and UI have suddenly become huge. How can I get them back to a normal, smaller size?

  • 104 replies
  • 108 have this problem
  • 318 views
  • Last reply by mamefox

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Yesterday all of a sudden my webpages and UI appeared to be magnified. While I can zoom out on websites, I cannot find any option to adjust the size of the UI.

I noticed that Firefox 22 (which I am running) has a new feature: "Windows: Firefox now follows display scaling options to render text larger on high-res displays". Is it possible to adjust how Firefox responds to the display scaling options perhaps?

07-27-13 - moderator locked this due to the length of this two month old thread - please post in one of the other threads discussing this issue

Yesterday all of a sudden my webpages and UI appeared to be magnified. While I can zoom out on websites, I cannot find any option to adjust the size of the UI. I noticed that Firefox 22 (which I am running) has a new feature: "Windows: Firefox now follows display scaling options to render text larger on high-res displays". Is it possible to adjust how Firefox responds to the display scaling options perhaps? ''07-27-13 - moderator locked this due to the length of this two month old thread - please post in one of the other threads discussing this issue''

Modified by the-edmeister

Chosen solution

Code changes regarding HiDPI support for high resolution displays have landed in Firefox 22 and later (bug #844604).

You can modify the layout.css.devPixelsPerPx and increase or decrease the value in 0.1 or 0.05 steps to adjust the size of fonts and other elements in Firefox.

  • The layout.css.devPixelsPerPx pref is a String value parsed to a float and allows to fine tune the dimensions of all elements (user interface and web pages) more precisely (resolution 0.1 or 0.05).
  • Change the default value -1 to 1 to make it work like in previous Firefox versions (100%)

Start with a value of 1 and adjust this value with 0.1 steps or 0.05 for finer adjustments.

  • Use values between 1.0 and about 0.5 to reduce elements in size (do NOT go all the way to 0.05!)
  • Use values greater than 1.0 to magnify and make elements larger (percentage divided by DPI, % / DPI).
  • http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config

If web pages needs to be adjusted after changing this pref then you can look at the Default FullZoom Level or NoSquint extension.

Use this extension to adjust the font size for the user interface:

Read this answer in context 👍 5

All Replies (20)

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Hi mamefox, the content area is now zoomed in accordance with your Windows DPI setting. Which version of Windows do you run and what is your font size/DPI setting? For example 125%/120ppi is pretty common. With that setting, the content area is zoomed 25%. You can use an add-on to globally reduce the zoom if you find yourself constantly zooming out (e.g., Ctrl-).

By the way, I do not see much difference between the 4 browsers. Were all of the windows the same size?

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Hi Blacklisted, -1.0 simply uses the Windows default. 1.0 sets the content area to 100% zoom (96ppi) and reduces the chrome area from the windows default to that same percentage.

If there's no value that makes sense for both, then add-ons are available to tweak the area you prefer to tweak.

I think it would be helpful if there were separate settings for the two areas, but I have no idea whether that might ever come to pass.

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@amitshree:

If resetting Firefox 22 does not resolve the problem that is being discussed here, then please don't waste your time posting the advice and instructions so that you won't waster our time reading them.

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jscher2000 :

You stated: "Those who use 100% in Windows are not affected."

That is incorrect. Changing the overall Windows DPI to 96, or 100% does NOT solve the zoom distortion of icons, etc. It does make the fonts extremely small FF and ALL other programs.

It's one of the first things I changed.

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@jscher2000: Understood.

Heretofore, I configured the Windows 7 desktop to 135% of the default DPI because everything was reduced to tiny proportions on the Hewlett Packard w1907 monitor at its preferred default resolution of 1440 x 900. Reducing the DPI to 130% to see how it affects Firefox 22 did not help any. However, it trashed most of the desktop shortcut icons, and restoring the DPI to 135% did not restore the icons. Using the "Change Icon" function on the context menu for the shortcuts doesn't restore the icon(s).

Now I have two problems instead of one. There are good reasons that I abandoned Thunderbird after the version 3 "devteam new feature festival". Sadly, it is starting to look as though Firefox is heading into the same sunset.

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Hi buggaz123, you wrote:

jscher2000 :

You stated: "Those who use 100% in Windows are not affected."

That is incorrect. Changing the overall Windows DPI to 96, or 100% does NOT solve the zoom distortion of icons, etc. It does make the fonts extremely small FF and ALL other programs.

What I meant was that at the default setting of layout.css.devPixelsPerPx=-1.0, there is no zooming of either Firefox chrome or content when Windows is using 96ppi (font size 100%). It should look identical to Firefox 21.

I haven't noticed any distortion of icons on my Windows 7 system that uses that combination, but it might depend on which extensions you have installed and what resolution icons it includes. Or the acuity of your eyesight: maybe I'm just not noticing.

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Hi Blacklisted, I'm sorry to hear about the desktop shortcuts. Are all program icons messed up, or just .url type shortcuts to web pages? If restarting Windows doesn't fix it, you might want to check Microsoft support or a Windows forum on that.

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This is the right position. Mozilla has to solve this problem. Mozilla created this problem. Firefox 22 is a catastrophy for the web. I have stopped the automatic update for Firefox. Now Mozilla is for me the same category as Microsoft and Google: Not really userfriendly! Congratulation!

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So I try again to upload the new browser-picture.

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I agree, this is Mozillas problem, and they need to fix it. And the only way to fix it, is to revert it back to how it was in the previous versions, that's it. No amount of tinkering or add ons or extensions solves the problem, and we shouldn't need to do so much tinkering to solve the problem in the first place.

This is ruining my browsing experience, especially the youtube, the youtube video display is horrible, and nothing near what it used to be. Things were perfect before, now it's ruined....worst part is, it was completely unnecessary...is this their idea of an upgrade. They need to do away with this new feature, or at the least, give us an option to disable it. They should've done that in the first place. A monumental blunder this is.

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Firefox testers are such lamers. Again they allowed to release defective Windows version to public.

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My "new" Firefox 21 refers to a new update: Firefox 23 beta. Does somebody already know, if this version of Firefox is acceptable? Is FF23beta without the layoutproblem of FF22?

Thank you for your answer!

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Hi mamefox,

I have FF23beta installed, and when I tried to put my settings back to the default values, I was again looking at huge webpages and UI. So the layout problems of FF22 are still there...

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Thank you very much! You saved me al lot of time and anger about Mozilla.

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So we have to publish this bug. We can help other users, to find a solution. For instance with the download of an older version of Firefox here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ And: No Firefox-update until Mozilla solved this problem!

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Vote for this bug on the page: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=887696

Maybe it will help...

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Thank you. I have voted. And I published tipps for self-help for firefox-users: Self-help for firefox-users

Modified by mamefox

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Your guess is probably true. Google find only some news. Bing find a lot of news from 2010. Facebook cannot find anything to #firefox22 and #problems. On twitter you can only read my postings. So it seems to the world, as would exist no problem with firefox22.

Therefore we have to make the facts public. We should find new ways for publishing as an alternative to searchengines and social networks to let the firefox-users know, that this could be an attack against mozilla and the idea of open-source-software! We can write blogs and we must use our normal homepages as administrator and designer, to publish the truth behind the bugs in Firefox 22 and Firefox 23 beta. I started my own way over my homepages with self-help for firefox-users

By the way: Who are the people in mozilla, who are responsible for this decision, the well known bug not to solve?

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Hi mamefox.
Please do not advice people to downgrade to older Firefox as that makes them vulnerable to security issues that have been fixed.
In this case this really isn't necessary as this can be fixed by modifying the layout.css.devPixelsPerPx pref and/or using an extension.
This is not a bug, but the consequence of making Firefox work properly on HiDPI devices.
On such devices text may appear too small if you use the default settings.
If you have made adjustments in both Windows and in Firefox in the past then theses changes may now add up and changes made in Firefox need to be reviewed and adjusted as Firefox is now HiDPI compatible and uses the OS settings.
In a lot of cases you only need to set the layout.css.devPixelsPerPx pref to 1 (this was the default in Firefox 21 and lower).

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I had this problem also, It has made ver. 22 completely unusable for me.

I'm not changing my Windows resolution back to 100%, not an option.

I'm a basic user, so I'm not fudging around with the ...layout.css.devPixelsPerPx pref, nor am I going to be using an extension.

I just want a browser I can open up, and use comfortably. I don't want add-ons just to make my display look the way it should by default.

Next thing you know, I'll need an extension if I actually want to leave my home page and browse, or an add on if I want to make a bookmark.

So, if you guys, and gals, want to make changes that include some monitor that isn't even in full, day to day, use by normal(competent but non-techie) people trying to find a good browser with which to navigate the web, then you should at least offer a setting upon install which gives the option to not use our windows res settings.

Fortunately, I had saved the ver. 21 set-up in my downloads. I will be using that for a few weeks in the hope that you change the set-up with an option to not use windows resolution settings. After a few weeks, I do not feel the vulnerabilities are worth the risk.

If you do not change this, I reluctantly can no longer use FF, and will be going to Chrome(which I hate, even though I'm posting from it now) or even back to IE.

FF has been my fav browser for years, I want to keep using it, but regrettably your change has made it's use impossible for me to continue.

BTW...on the input page...https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/ ... it's obvious that we are not alone, we were just the ones tech savvy enough to have found this forum.

Modified by jt1111

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