Preview Pane Border

Is there any way to reduce/remove the thick border that Entourage 2008
puts around the preview pane? My wife has poor vision and runs her
monitor at 800x500 resolution (to enlarge everything on the screen).
She's quite happy with Entourage 2004, but Entourage 2008 is virtually
unusable because at that resolution the border on the preview pane
(coupled with the other non-reducible elements) reduces the visible
amount of preview text by approximately 3 lines from 5 lines to 2
lines.

Thanks in advance.

Mike
Tue Mar 04 13:47:20 CST 2008

osakans@yahoo.com at osakans@yahoo.com wrote on 3/4/08 10:19 AM:

> Is there any way to reduce/remove the thick border that Entourage 2008
> puts around the preview pane? My wife has poor vision and runs her
> monitor at 800x500 resolution (to enlarge everything on the screen).
> She's quite happy with Entourage 2004, but Entourage 2008 is virtually
> unusable because at that resolution the border on the preview pane
> (coupled with the other non-reducible elements) reduces the visible
> amount of preview text by approximately 3 lines from 5 lines to 2
> lines.
>
> Thanks in advance.


Agreed. The sheer waste of screen real estate in Entourage is off the deep
end. I'm using a 24" monitor @ 1920 x 1200 and it still seems awkward and
large. Don't get me started on that my day thing. It looks like it should
read Duplo? at the top.

Diane
Tue Mar 04 18:06:41 CST 2008

On 3/4/08 10:19 AM, in article
04164a20-5c28-464f-91e1-04ccb93e87ae@h11g2000prf.googlegroups.com,
"osakans@yahoo.com" <osakans@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Is there any way to reduce/remove the thick border that Entourage 2008
> puts around the preview pane? My wife has poor vision and runs her
> monitor at 800x500 resolution (to enlarge everything on the screen).
> She's quite happy with Entourage 2004, but Entourage 2008 is virtually
> unusable because at that resolution the border on the preview pane
> (coupled with the other non-reducible elements) reduces the visible
> amount of preview text by approximately 3 lines from 5 lines to 2
> lines.

You can send feedback. However any fix would be a long time coming. Try
using something like Large Type. LargeType (donationware) is a Mac OS X
service that displays any selected text in large type similar to the large
type option in Address Book.

<http://www.coldpizzasoftware.com/largetype/>

As a person with disabilities I can empathize with your wife. The lack of
understanding given to users with disabilities in both software and hardware
is about zilch. All my complaints just seem to fall on deaf ears. Our only
hope would be for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to develop problems. :-)

When working in Office, you can use the ³Send Feedback² option under the
Help menu in all of the Office applications to contact MacBU.

Or... Visit the Mactopia Product Feedback link here:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/suggestions.mspx>

--
Diane, Microsoft Mac MVP (MVPs are not Microsoft Employees)
Entourage Help Page <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

osakans
Wed Mar 05 09:37:51 CST 2008


> You can send feedback. However any fix would be a long time coming. Try
> using something like Large Type. LargeType (donationware) is a Mac OS X
> service that displays any selected text in large type similar to the large
> type option in Address Book.

Thanks, Diane. I'm not sure LargeType would allow for the readable
display of an entire e-mail message, but it's worth a look.

One thing we've got going for us is that as the population ages an
increasing percentage of the user base will have these issues, so I'd
think vendors won't be able to ignore them forever.

Diane
Wed Mar 05 17:31:56 CST 2008

On 3/5/08 7:37 AM, in article
4ee7f4c5-6f4d-485f-b76c-0684ff7046c3@s19g2000prg.googlegroups.com,
"osakans@yahoo.com" <osakans@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I'm not sure LargeType would allow for the readable
> display of an entire e-mail message, but it's worth a look.

Just ran across these suggestions posted on the MacOSXHints forum:

<http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=86641>:

Look at Coloristic - <http://www.bubblepop.com/coloristic/> This is a mouse
over magnification program. $12

Also, this link provides a lot of useful information on the Mac options,
used with, for example a PC mouse with a wheel.... wheel increases/decreases
magnification.

<http://www.low-vision.org/index.php?dispage=77>

If you register for a free Apple Developer account,
http://developer.apple.com/, and download the Xcode development tools that
come with it, you'll get a very good, free magnifying app called Pixie.
Pixie puts a magnified window (you select the magnification level) on your
Desktop. Pixie's default behavior is to follow the cursor, providing a
magnified window of wherever the cursor happens to be. If you dig into the
preferences, you can also make the window always float on top of all others.

Let me add that you can change the size of the Pixie window, too. Its
default size is adequate for many purpose but not ideal for reading text. If
you would like a larger window, you can increase the size by modifying
Pixie's .plist file--and that you can do with the Property List Editor,
another of the free tools you get with that developer's account. The keys to
modify in com.apple.Pixie.plist (it will be in your home directory after
you've run Pixie once, ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Pixie.plist) are

SourceHeight
SourceWidth

Change the numbers from 48 (which appears to equate to approximately 144
pixels) to something larger. There's probably an upper limit, but I don't
know what it is. (you can just grab the corner of the Pixie window to resize
it. Much easier that way.)


--
Diane, Microsoft Mac MVP (MVPs are not Microsoft Employees)
Entourage Help Page <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>