Responding to Comments on "High DPI Support in Windows Aero Vista"

re: Responding to Comments on "High DPI Support in Windows Aero Vista"

Dean Harding — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:47:25 GMT

You know, I've been running Vista (Beta 2) at 144 DPI, and I checked that "Use Windows-XP style scaling" - which basically turns off the bitmap scaling.

The reason is that I've found most app actually work PROPERLY in high-DPI situations - not the other way around. So I was forever checking their "disable DPI scaling" checkboxes in the "Compatibilty" tab.

Notable exceptions are basically anything that provides a custom "skin". But mostly it works pretty good, and the blurryness that the bitmap scaling does means I can't use an app for more than five minutes without going cross-eyed.

One strange exception is Windows Live Messenger. MSN Messenger (the old version) scaled properly, but WLM does not...

re: Responding to Comments on "High DPI Support in Windows Aero Vista"

bitbonk — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:35:28 GMT

WPF device independent pixels for dummies

http://bitbonk.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E17530AA6EFF7871!143.entry?_c11_blogpart_blogpart=blogview&_c=blogpart#permalink

re: Responding to Comments on "High DPI Support in Windows Aero Vista"

Sven Groot — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:44:29 GMT

Again a mention of using manifests to indicate your app is high-DPI aware. Again without any mention of how to do it.

All I can find in the Windows SDK is SetProcessDPIAware which I can't use (it causes all sorts of scaling issues if you call it in a .Net 2.0 app, whereas the apps behave correctly if you just check the "don't scale" box on the compatibility tab). I'd love to see if the manifest approach works, but I can't find how to do it. Is there any documentation on it? Is it even implemented yet?

On a sidenote: the big problem with high DPI scaling of bitmaps is that it seems that most applications (including Windows Explorer, even in Vista, as well as Office 2007) seem to scale them using the GDI StretchBlt function, which looks absolutely terrible. I guess it's too late to switch Windows over to some form of scaling that actually uses some form of smoothing, even if just bilinear. At least the DWM scaled apps don't have this problem, but the blurry text makes them give me a headache.

re: Responding to Comments on "High DPI Support in Windows Aero Vista"

Dean Harding — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 02:29:39 GMT

Sven: You have to call it before absolutely anything else. I usually do it in the same place I call Application.EnableVisualStyles() - seems to work for me (though I haven't done extensive testing).

But I agree that a quick post on how to do it the "manifest" would be nice...

re: Responding to Comments on "High DPI Support in Windows Aero Vista"

Sven Groot — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 14:26:34 GMT

I know, but even if it's the very first thing I call in Main(), the autoscaling still messes up.

I think it has to do with font scaling. .Net 2.0 scales forms based on font size, and by default it uses the DEFAULT_GUI_FONT returned by GetStockObject, which changes size with the DPI settings but has a number of drawbacks, including not adhering to the user's font size settings and always returning MS Sans Serif (even though you'd want it to use Tahoma on XP and Segoe UI on Vista).

So I make my forms use a different font, which does use the correct font for the OS and adhere to the font size settings. When I do this, in combination with SetProcessDPIAware, it doesn't scale correctly anymore. Like I said, if I don't call that, but check the "disable DPI scaling" option on the compatibility tab, it does scale correctly.

Software Information » Greg Schechter’s Blog : Responding to Comments on High DPI Support in …

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:36:56 GMT

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Windows 7 Release Candidate gets new features

Windows 7 Release Candidate gets new features — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:33:08 GMT

Esta build (7100. 0. winmain_ win7rc. 090421- 1700) foi compilada na passada Terça- Feira e ao que parece já começou a ser distribuída a parceiros OEM.

Greg Schechter s Blog Responding to Comments on High DPI Support in | Wood TV Stand

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:13:16 GMT

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