Hi,

I'm about 1200 kanji in book 1 now, when I run into kanji online often I can't even make out some of the primitives in the more complicated kanji because they are so small.
Is this a common problem, or will this go away when you know more kanji?

Ctrl+Shift+Plus.

On a more serious note, I have the same concerns. While using the dictionary for DS, I always set the font size to the maximum as, well, anything lower than the penultimate big setting is just illegible to me.

Since, as a result of RtK, I view the kanji analytically, not holistically, any truncation of primitives (such as removing a horizontal stroke from "grow up", etc.) is really devastating on my ability to actually recognize kanji.

So, yeah, I would like to reiterate tenken3's question: does this issue go away as one becomes more proficient?

[ファブリス]

Normally your browser should be using the "gothic" font for most of the Japanese text on the web. The gothic font is more readable at small sizes. If it's not the case try configuring your browser, for Mozilla Firefox for example it's Tools > Options > Content > Fonts & Colors > "Advanced..." button > Fonts for.. "Japanese" from the dropdown, then try setting "MS Gothic" for the next 4 select boxes, so it will use the MS Gothic font for serif, sans-serif, proportional text etc.

I'm using FF 2.0, I tried following your suggestion, but in the first box (titled 'Proportional') I can only choose between 'Serif' and 'Sans Serif', the other 3 are selected on MS Gothic now.
If I set the 'character encoding' Unicode to Japanese the English text changes font, but the kanji/kana look the same to me.

What am I doing wrong?

Yeah, after you've studied more and more Kanji compounds, you'll probably find they become a lot more legible at the smaller size. I suppose it's down to recognizing the patterns, like you do when you read English.

And of course, you just need to regularly practice reading at that size.