On my computer at work, I have Windows 95 installed.  The version
number on the System control panel is 4.00.950 B.  The version of
Internet Explorer that I have installed is Internet Explorer
5.50.4522.1800, according to the "About Internet Explorer" dialogue.

The problem I have is that Internet Explorer is rendering fonts listed
as 'sans-serif' in cascading style sheets in what I *believe* is
Swis721 BlkEx BT.  (Whatever it is, it's big, blocky, pixellated and
ugly.)

Similarly, documents surrounded with the HTML 'PRE' tag or with the
font family as 'monospace' or 'fixed' in are instead replaced with the
WPBoxDrawing font from WordPerfect (Version 7 for Windows 3.x), making
the text *entirely* unreadable.  (The WPBoxDrawing font is a
collection of lines, corners, and so on that resemble the box-drawing
characters in the high end of ASCII.)

Both these problems show up in style-sheets at 13 points, but may show
up at other point sizes, for all I know.  I have seen the sans-serif
problem at www.versiontracker.com (the sans-serif problem), and I have
seen the monotype problem both on a website that is an interface for
my ISP's e-mail (I cannot provide that, as you'd have to log into my
mail), but also here on Google Answers.

Please note that there are a few possible solutions which I have found
through my own research but cannot do.  I cannot uninstall the
WPBoxDrawing font from my system, as it is used in the documents I
prepare at work.  I cannot upgrade to a later version of Windows or of
WordPerfect.  (That is under my employer's control, and not current
planned.)  And Internet Explorer 6 does not run on Windows 95, so I
can't upgrade to MSIE6.

Your help would be appreciated.

There are a couple of ways to deal with such a problem.  

The first thing to check would be your default fonts:
If you open MSIE and look at the toolbar along the top, select "Tools"
and then click on "Internet Options".

This will bring up an option box, at the bottom of that box you'll see a
button labelled 
"Fonts".  Clicking this will allow you to set the default fonts to suit
your needs.

You could also click the button "Accessibility" next to "Fonts" and this
will let you create a style sheet on your 
computer to use on web-pages.

A possibility you might like to consider would be to install an
alternate browser such as Opera, Netscape7, Mozilla1.1, or K-Meleon (or
many more) which are all still supported and developed, even on Windows
95.

http://www.opera.com/
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/default.jsp
http://www.mozilla.org/
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/

Of course you could always do what Microsoft want and buy an upgrade to
XP, and the hardware you'd need to run it, but that may be a little
drastic :-)

Caomhin

---

Request for Answer Clarification by wcitymike-ga on 31 Aug 2002 20:29 PDT

With all due respect, sir, this does not answer my question.  

I have already set Tools > Internet Options > Fonts to Times New Roman
and Courier New, but MSIE5.5 does not use these choices for sans-serif
and for monotype.

I have tried Netscape and other browsers, but I really prefer MSIE's
speed and interface over the other browsers available for Windows 95. 
My question is more to how to fix the problem with MSIE, not for other
browsers without the problem.

And in my question, I did state specifically that my employer would
make a decision to upgrade the operating system installed on my
machine, and it is thus entirely not an option for me.

---

Clarification of Answer by caomhin-ga on 01 Sep 2002 03:27 PDT

The problem you're having is that both Times New Roman and Courier New
are both proportional width serif fonts and therefore Windows just
can't accept that you'd want to use them as sans-serif or fixed width
fonts.

I've no knowledge of anyone being able to convince Windows otherwise. 
A good sans-serif font is Helvetica and Lucida Console works well for
monotype (and is also sans-serif).  An option therefore is to try
those.  If you really want to use Times New Roman and Courier New then
you'd do best following my advice about creating a local style-sheet.


p { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }
pre { font-family: "Courier New"; }

Saving the above two lines in a file on your computer and selecting
Tools > Internet Options > Accessibility allows you to enter the
location of that file and it will override the settings of a website
so that all paragraphs are rendered using Times New Roman and all PRE
tags will use Courier New.  It would also be easy for you to add
options for any other tags you find affected.

I apologise for my joke about upgrading Windows.

Caomhin