23 Aug 2014

Magnifier in Chromebook

Off lately I've started to use the C720 (one of Acer's first Chromebooks) and am I in love with it or what.

While using the Chromebook to view an online Training that was created in a Flash environment (probably using Adobe Connect) I couldn't help myself get frustrated with the fact that I can't do simple things such as Zoom-in on the training video (which happened to be a Shell session) and had to really concentrate on a small part of the screen to read what the font wanted to say.

Most browsers that aren't from the prehistoric era, support zoom-in / zoom-out but the presentation application is 'smart' enough to ensure that that doesn't work as expected. So although the HTML does get enlarged but the presentation stays the same size (just re-centered) to the new zoomed in/out screen space.

A second option (I knew existed in Ubuntu since its early days) had a nifty feature for these situations, where you could just zoom-in and enlarge the screen (unbeknownst to the browser and all applications below the UI layer) this meant that anything rendered on the screen was magnified.

Now Chromebook was smart, pretty compact and an awesome little product, but I really thought expecting graphics related jugglery would be an overkill... and I couldn't find such a feature either.

... Until I read the 'Accessibility' feature in Chromebook (which is a simple little checkbox) and Voila!

Steps:

  1. Click User-Image (bottom right)
  2. Click Settings
  3. Click 'Advanced Settings'
  4. Under 'Accessibility' options -> Enable Screen Modifier
  5. Zoom-in using .... Ctrl-Alt- button
  6. Zoom-out using .... Ctrl-Alt- button
Am still to find things that I can't do on this ultra-cheap / ultra-light / long-lasting-battery / neat laptop!

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