General Chat

Mostly VirtualBox as it runs on anything and comes free(ish) with Linux.

Running any VM on a 32bit machine is a bit challenging 'cos of the memory problems. With 64bit OS and 4 GB RAM & up you are good to go.

Microsoft have quite a good free VM which runs best on machines with a bit of grunt and with virtualisation support. It will def.run most 32bit recent versions of linux without much trouble as well as XP. I have managed MonsterTruck and FS 2002 in the VM as well as USB scanners which have no WIn7 support.

However MS are trying to shift their commercial side to Azure VM which is one of the reasons why DWP have got their kickers in a twist - it doesn't scale. Nothing MS does scales up seriously which is why so many govt depts get burned (Obama Care, NHS) - they should have gone to SpecSavers, sorry, Oracle. Germany & France have banned Microsoft from public procurement projects, they have to run on Linux.



For serious stuff when a VM has to work smooth zero hassle then VMWare is the only way to go. Co$ts though. They do have a bare bones Sphere which is free.

Do you see where I am coming from now?

Love your economic turnaround proposals and couldn't agree more!

Incidentally, what do you usually use for a virtual machine? (meant to ask before)

ping!

Just ran a stock XP in a virtual box hooking up an old DELL 1024x768 I keep for emergencies ( well 4 actually ). Great big google headings as you say. So they have quietly adjusted their output to fit the new standard.

No idea what it is but pretty obviously not 1024x768.
Then tried GenesRU at the same res. Aaaaaaagh!
No wonder they are losing users. GRU is traditionally at the budget end of the market not big screens and fast connexions. Well, some of my connexions are fast, a lot too fast according to my late parent.

GRU now have Van den Belt and her new brand manager sidekicks in place. How would you go about into shifting D C Thomson Family History ( their catchy new title ) from £ 2million loss to profit in one year ?

a. A makeover with lots of social advertising plugged in possibly as the mother and father of Facebook extensions
b. As (a) but with lots of ww1 stuff. ( their intention )
c. Put up subs to £ 15 per month and thus compete with A-y.
d. Send the site to join the Dandy
e. Take the co-op amendment
f. Get Geo Osbourne to sell off GRO thus removing an obstacle to growth and a new sideline now that NOTW are no longer in business.
g. none of these, you have a cunning plan

For the dozen at most people who may read this make sure that ALL the stuff you have on GRU is backed up some place. Events can move fast on the web.

;-)

I totally agree with you Rollo.

Well they can always just press Ctrl- keys to reduce the size of the display to whatever they are comfortable with.

Unfortunately a lot of our biz/public sector clients are still using XP often with IE6 ( !!! ) so I have to run this turkey. Even Microsoft have had to postpone its death by one more year.

The most common screen size run by XP on a desktop is 1024x768 though it is far from unusual to find the display set at 800x600. Truetype is hardly ever enabled despite the huge difference it makes. The p-x in tech support either don't know how to roll out a config script or just give instruictions to run at 800x600 when the user complains they cannot read tiny fonts on some huge form which has been knocked up by "the consultants".

Neither resolution are adequate for today's web and as you say using defaults Google and other sites will appear larger than wanted.

The free fixes are (1) use Ctrl- to reduce as many times as wanted and Ctrl+ to enlarge (2) set the default global font sizes in the settings and set it to override globally.

Another cheap fix is a screen with more resolution - it is quite ez to get a 19in wide screen for £ 15-20 off eBay, Gumtree etc or a 5:4 Viewsonic (for example) 1600x1200 for £ 25. Even new wide screen 22in is not much over £ 100.

Another cheap fix is to stop using Google and its maloderous tracking of yr life and use DuckDuckGo or even bing. fwiw if you turn off Google tracking, pop ups and adware everything runs a lot faster. That still leaves the 90% who don't ensuring billions of ad revenue.

Within 10 years 90% of users will use the net via "smart" tv / phones and the scope for doing yr own thing will mainly reside with Linux notwithstanding its Godzilla infant (Android). Ten years after that (at most) possession of equipment which allows you to write and deploy software outside of a controlled environment will be illegal. Includign choosing yr own font size.

fwiw Google, Amazon, Walmart el al are testing out software that will predict what you need and then buy it for you .... sort of retail version of Minority Report. Yep, products you are not deemed suitable for you just won't see. This is known as proactive advertising.

The issue (not really a problem) is exactly as I stated earlier.

I agree about the adware/BHOs etc but based on the PMs I receive, a huge number of GRU users do still use IE and XP (I never even mentioned XP before you said you had tested Google under that OS).

My OP was merely about me not liking it and the fact that each entry takes up more room.
That's all.

Do you mean that Google display the link in a larger font than the precis just underneath the link ? Why is that a problem ?

The majority of people on the web do not use IE. Neither does a majority use Windows XP. The most popular Microsoft OS is Windows7 (52%)

The mileage of GRU users may of course vary.
Most appear to have assorted toolbars installed if only MS addons and Google. A lot appear to have adware addins :-(

That isn't exactly what I was saying.

Using IE in its bog standard state (which is what the majority of members of this site will be doing) presents the user with larger links (headings as some may want to call them) when using Google.

The average user will not know (and probably not want to know) how to change this even though, for some, it will doubtless prove very annoying.

IE allows you to override any or all of fonts size colors though it has to be global. It also allows a global style sheet to override all sites. The main use of this has been people setting up systems for those with visual impairment. It is increasingly being used by people with large screens.

I have tested Google under IE with XP, Win7, VISTA and Win8 without noticing overlarge fonts being used by Google.

GRU have made a total dogs b-x of the style sheets on their site. Indeed the scripting is also an utter mess which is maybe one reason that they daren't touch anything in case it all blows up again. Lots of scripts designed for the visually impaired no longer work with GRU.

For that reason I now usually run GRU using the Pale Moon browser thus avoiding CSS Hell. PaleMoon makes it very, very easy to set up color schemes and fonts as you want and imposes these on GRU regardless of the multiple nested style sheets. No need for CSS or scripting skills at all.

Pale Moon is a derivative of Mozilla Firefox with most of the bloatware removed so it runs fast on older systems eg P4 or Athlon. It rubs fine in parallel with standard Firefox.

Microsoft really cannot make up its mind about IE. Versions EI9 and earlier are def. not fit for purpose as they have serious security problems and poor to abysmal support of web standards. With IE10 and IE11 MS M$ have somewhat improved standards compliance though still bottom of the class.At the same time they have added in lotsa stuff to do with Azure and their cloud services inc Office 13.

For the vast number of users, the use of style sheets is not really an option although I do similar to you.
I have had a tinker using IE (which is what many people use) to see how the Google results page can be altered, using the resources and standard expertise that are at hand for the average user, and I am still getting the headings in a larger font. I can alter the size globally but not independently.

it will unless they are using a graphic instead of a font

eg on Genes I get the purple logo but "General Chat" is displayed using
my default font "Roboto" not GRUs odd looking thingy.

I also use a style sheet which overrides the GRU color scheme with something much more to my taste. GRU refuse to let me post how to do this but there are well known free gadgets for this which work with Chrome and Firefox. They also let you set up fonts for a single site rather than globally.

I have one of those large double page screens so that using site fonts I would need the eyes of a hawk with the site defaults ... at a rough guess Google think that this is now standard.

I don't think that will prevent the results (headings) from displaying in a larger font compared to the rest of the listing.

just go to your browser settings, pick a font of yr size and fancy and tell the browser that web pages font should be overridden with yr choice, ez

result: consistency between sites and no stupid fonts from GRU

It is like looking at clunky websites of yesteryear

I agree Errol it's too large.

I must say that I really do not like what I am seeing.

Once again, the developers at Google appear to be making some changes.
Now, I am always very much in favour - when it is to people's benefit.
But amongst some of the various changes being rolled out by the search engine is a new look to the way results are displayed including a larger font.
I noticed some of the changes before Christmas on my phone when Google were having a play around (as they are wont to do) and no doubt they will continue to tinker.

However, the larger font is completely unnecessary and I cannot see a need or justification for it. It makes the page look less tidy and means that results take up more room so that it is in fact harder to look at top results at a glance.

Some of the other "improvements" are ok such as the way ads are now displayed (which I quite like).