[digitalprimate]

How can one make the letters appear bigger in Mac OS X?
I noticed my dad has difficulties reading the small letters on screen.

Anyone who knows how to solve this?

[Dave]

As far as I know, it depends on the app. In Safari, it's cmd-+. There's also the "Zoom" feature in Universal Access in System Preferences.

[LudwigVan]

Originally Posted by digitalprimate How can one make the letters appear bigger in Mac OS X? I noticed my dad has difficulties reading the small letters on screen. Anyone who knows how to solve this?

Just the content of the windows, or the menu bar and such also? I believe the latter require some kind of hack.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by LudwigVan Just the content of the windows, or the menu bar and such also? I believe the latter require some kind of hack.

This could easily be solved if Apple exposed an interface to the resolution independence settings (and if they'd finally push hard on developers to make apps play nicely in RI modes). Changing the RI settings will change the scale of everything on the screen, not just fonts.

If you really want this feature now, you can install Apple's developer tools and use Quartz Debug to change the scaling factor (temporarily). Beware that it's still buggy and many things still don't scale 100% correctly.

Here are two screenshots of Safari, one at the normal 1x and one at 1.5x.

Note that unlike the "screen zooming" feature, this keeps everything sharp and doesn't suffer from the "pan and scan" effect.

[Koodari]

Originally Posted by Dave As far as I know, it depends on the app. In Safari, it's cmd-+. There's also the "Zoom" feature in Universal Access in System Preferences.

The ctrl-mousewheel option is, by far, the easiest way to use Zoom.

(don't remember if this has to be enabled explicitly in System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Mouse, or if it's the default)

[curiousuburb]

Depending on which version of OS X, hold control key and scroll your mouse... screen zoom.

D'oh! Didn't refresh old window and got pipped to the advice by Koodari.

[digitalprimate]

On Brad's answer

Thanks, that's exactly what I had in mind, but I'd rather not install software that's not working 100% on my dad's new MBP. He literally has had his first Mac-Experience© 45 days ago. He seems inquisitive and seems to remember stuff better than when I had to explain things on his PC. But he still is, after so many years, worse than a computer novice.
So everything better works and works exactly like I showed him, otherwise he won't use the function.

Anyway thanks ALL who tried to help. Big time.

[Taskiss]

I found that changing the screen resolution is what I need when my eyes are tired. Just change it back when doing stuff that requires the higher resolution.

It changes everything on the screen, but that's OK for me.

[chucker]

If you can deal with the inevitable interpolation, that's certainly an option. Hopefully, somewhere down the road of 10.5 point releases, resolution independence will have few enough bugs that you can actually use it. Set the scale factor to, say, 1.25. Right now, though, there's still visual glitches just about everywhere.