Windows Live Mail is a great email client, no question. But one very longstanding complaint is the way it renders fonts. Whereas in other mail clients it’s stupidly easy to make mails look a specific way for text, in Windows Live Mail (and the previous Outlook Express) it is, put politely, a challenge.

This tutorial is how to get the fonts to look monospaced (i.e. Courier New) everywhere for email content. And I’ll also instruct how to switch back and forth between monospaced and rich-styled HTML format.

Windows Live Mail by default hides the menu bar. To show it, just press ALT. If you want it to stay there permanently, press ALT+M (to bring up menu options), then M again. To hide it, repeat process.

Click Tools then Options, then the Read tab. You see this:

Check the box for Read all messages in plain text. Then click the Fonts button.

You see this:

Set the proportional font and fixed-width font to Courier New. Then set the font size to Smaller. Then click OK.

Click the Send tab. You see this:

Check the box for Reply to messages using the format in which they were sent. You do this so when anybody sends you an email with photos in it and you want to include those photos in the reply, there’s no special steps needed.

Next to Mail Sending Format, tick the option for Plain text.

Click the Compose tab. You see this:

Set the Compose Font for both mail and news to 10 pt. Courier New.

Click OK.

When viewing a mail, such as the PCMech Newsletter, it will look like this:

If you want to view this in the original HTML version, there are two ways:

1. Click View, then Message in HTML.
2. Press ALT+SHIFT+H

Then it looks like this:

You can switch back to plain text by closing and opening the email again.

Lastly, on replies if the message is in HTML, the compose window will load everything, including all images, custom fonts and so on. If you want to switch to a plain text reply in the compose window, click Format then Plain text, otherwise leave as is.

Why use the plain text only option?

It decreases the risk of having malicious code executed in your emails. Granted, WL Mail is very good at suspecting phishing attempts and does not allow images from unknown senders, but choosing the option to read in plain text only adds an extra layer of security.

Why change all the font settings like this?

Configuring WL Mail in this fashion gives all your emails a uniform look that’s easier on the eyes. The default way it’s configured makes some mails have huge text while others do not, with little consistency from mail to mail.

Don’t like monospaced? Use any font and size options you want.

For those with not-so perfect vision, using the above methods with a different font (such as Trebuchet MS) with a larger size (such as ‘Larger’ combined with Trebuchet MS 14pt) will make all your emails much easier to read and reply to.

If you hadn’t heard, Google is intending to shake up the way it does advertising by customizing it based on your search patterns.

How does the big G know how to do this? They’ll be reading your browser cookies to make it work.

If this doesn’t bother you, browse as you normally would.

If it does bother you that the big G is going to be reading your cookies in a way that makes you uncomfortable, here are some quick ways to kill cookies fast.

Deleting all cookies every time the browser closes (Firefox)

Tools, Options, Privacy, set Keep until: to I close Firefox

Like this:

Overriding default cookie settings (Internet Explorer 7)

Start, Control Panel, Internet Options, Privacy (tab), Advanced (button)

Tick the option to override automatic cookie handling. The easiest one to use is "Prompt" for first and third party cookies. Yes, this may be annoying to be prompted every time a cookie comes by, but at least you know when and where they’re coming from.

Alternatively, you set each to "Block" but check "Always allow session cookies". This should allow for normal web site use that requires cookies (like Gmail and Hotmail) but not retain any when the browser closes.

There is no option I could find to delete all cookies automatically when the browser closes, however you can delete them manually.

Start, Control Panel, Internet Options, General (tab), Delete (button under Browsing History)

Hit the Delete cookies button here to delete them.

Does browser cookie reading bother you?

Some privacy advocates say that Google’s decision to custom tailor ads based on browsing habits is wrong. Is it? Let us know.

The Microsoft Windows operating environment introduced something called "font smoothing" right around the time Internet Explorer 4.0 was released in 1997. Even way back then (this is before the release of Windows 98) Microsoft understood that type on screen must be as legible as possible.

ClearType, another Microsoft way of making fonts look better, was announced in 1998 but didn’t make an appearance until January 2000 as a feature of the Microsoft Reader software for those that remember that title.

When Windows XP was introduced in 2001, ClearType was built-in.

All this font stuff is called subpixel rendering technology. In layman’s terms is just means the fonts you see on screen are rendered differently.

In Windows XP (and in Vista assumedly) you can enable or disable ClearType at whim. This is done via Control Panel / Display / Appearance / Effects button. You see this:

If you check "Use the following method…" and select "Standard" from the drop-down menu, fonts under the 12pt size will not show as ClearType. If you select "ClearType", all fonts are rendered in ClearType. If you uncheck the box, no fonts will be shown in ClearType at all.

I do recommend anyone running Windows XP to download and use the ClearType Tuner PowerToy. This will add an icon in your Control Panel called "ClearType Tuning". When you click it you see this:

Using the Wizard helps out a great deal in selecting how much ClearType rendering you want. Very handy to have.

Which is more readable, ClearType or Standard?

This obviously depends on a few factors:

LCD or CRT?

Subpixel rendering has heavy concentration to make fonts look good on an LCD monitor (note the screen shot above: "..improves the readability of text on existing LCDs"). More often than not if you’re using a CRT, turning ClearType off will look better.

Why is this? Because CRT monitors aren’t as crisp as LCDs are. If you have ClearType enabled on a CRT it may "fuzz out" the fonts too much causing them to look "smudgy".

Font size

Obviously larger fonts look better than smaller ones when talking about subpixel rendering. Think of it this way: With digital photography, larger resolution is always better. With smaller resolutions you lose focus. The same can be said for fonts.

LCD screen striping

If the smaller fonts on your screen have the tendency to have oddly-colored edges, sometimes something as simple as changing the LCD screen striping will fix this. The ClearType Tuning applet has an "Advanced" section where you can change it from red/green/blue to blue/green/red:

Note the left side of the screen shot above.

If when you change this it makes the fonts look bad, just change it back. It will not "mess up" your monitor whatsoever because it has nothing to do with screen resolution; just the font rendering method.

Standard resolution fonts do not have any issue whatsoever with display no matter what screen striping method you use.

Is the font "interrupted" by a background image?

This is particularly dealing with what wallpaper you use. Certain wallpaper will make the text under your icons difficult to read while others will not.

General rule of thumb: Darker-image wallpaper always make the icon text look better. And of course, using no wallpaper is the best for legibility – especially if the background color is black.

What’s your refresh rate?

The standard refresh rate for almost all LCD monitors is 60Hz. I made mention in the past that some offer the option of 59Hz. This may offer slightly better readability.

With CRT monitors, the default refresh rate is also 60Hz – but you may find better luck with 70, 72, 75 or 85 depending on the choices you have.

If no matter what you do for hertz on a CRT the fonts still look crappy, disable ClearType.

Screen hardware settings

This actually has nothing to do with the font itself but rather the physical monitor settings.

The ones to pay attention to are:

• Brightness
• Contrast
• Sharpness
• Color

Brightness and Contrast:

When your monitor is showing nothing but black, it should be as black as possible and not gray-ish. If the gray exists this will "fuzz" fonts a bit.

Sharpness:

Too much sharpness will cause odd colors to appear in font rendering.

Color:

You have "cool" and "warm" settings here. Generally speaking "cool" (blue-ish) is better read easier. HOWEVER – going to blue can be trying on the eyes by making the whites too stark. Adjust only in slight increments if you have the option.

Periodically I get asked how to get videos uploaded to YouTube to look better. The easiest possible way to do this is to simply capture/import and export your video file as 640×480 resolution for great video quality.

Here’s a quick tutorial for those who use Windows Movie Maker:

Import at 640×480

If you are importing from a camcorder, you can skip this step as you are already importing at 640×480 or more.

If you are capturing from a webcam, check your capture settings. It’s most likely set to 320×240. See if you have the option to bump that up to 640×480. (Note: Some webcams don’t have this option but yours might.)

If you are using screen capture software such as CamStudio, make sure you are capturing an area that is at least 640×480 in size.

Export at 640×480

When exporting your movie to WMV format, you will first see this screen:

(click for full size)

Click the link for Show more choices…

(click for full size)

Select Other settings and choose Video for LAN (768 Kbps). This will render a 640×480 video at 30 frames per second. The resulting WMV file will look better when uploaded to YouTube.

A router is any device that acts as a gateway between 2 or more separate networks. In our case, that means that the local network is connected to the Internet, and vice versa. The router ignores traffic local traffic or traffic it is not configured to handle, but when Internet access is attempted from within the local network, it springs into action. With NAT (Network Address Translation), the router shares the Internet connection to all the computers connected to the local network. The router keeps track of the originating local computer and manages the connection with the outside Internet server. If a computer on the Internet attempts a connection with the router or to a local computer past the router, the router denies the connection unless the router was specially configured to allow that connection.

Many routers can treat the wireless LAN (WLAN) as a separate network from the wired LAN. This is often done because wireless networks are easy to break into. The idea is that people can keep their wired computers away from the untrusted wireless network. The router will still share the Internet connection (WAN) to both the wireless and wired LANs, regardless of this configuration.

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