148dpi on 1900x1200 screen

from WinCustomize Forums
Hi everybody,

I am using WindowBlinds (along with some of the other ObjectDesktop tools) for quite a while now and I am very happy with it. But after having bought a Precision M60 from Dell, I am having a problem with the size of the UI elements. Every time I buy a new VGA card or monitor, I usually adjust the dpi settings. In the case of my new notebook this is 148 dpi (1900x1200 pixels). It works perfectly with the Standard Windows XP themes, but it ain't with WindowBlinds. In most cases text elements are resized correctly, but not the place they reside in. Of course, this is just the most obvious.

I think I am going to try to create my own "adapted" 1900x1200 148dpi skin with SkinStudio. But it will my first one. Has anybody had any experiences with something similar? Every hint is highly appreciated!!!!

Thanks a lot in advance!
Stefan




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Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Ok, first of all, pixels is pixels, so whether your monitor is set at 72dpi, 96dpi, 148dpi or anything else, it is not going to affect the location of pixels on the screen. The 1900 x 1200 setting is what matters in this respect. Because the ratio of width to height in your resolution is significantly different than the normal 5:4 (eg 1280x1024) or 4:3 (eg 1024x768) your WB skins will appear to be somewhat different for elements which are stretched or tiled but not a whole lot, certainly not enough to make a dramatically unattractive appearance I wouldn't think. The difference will be most dramatic on vertical elements, so theoretically you shouldn't see a tremendous difference on most of the skin.

For the most part, the only real difference you should see are those items which depend on the text for locations. Because your font sizes will be changed fairly dramatically relative to what the skinner probably used when designing the skin, you will probably end up needing to change content margins in order to get icons, text, and highlight/mouseover effects to align properly with the background elements, especially on the start panel and menus. Other than that, I would be quite surprised to find anything else being affected.


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Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The one possible exception to my post above that occurs to me is that if there are elements in the skin which have a great deal of vertically-oriented texture or patterns and are set to stretch horizontally, these items will be seriously affected because of the big difference in aspect ratio. I'm thinking mainly of titlebar, taskbar and statusbars here. That's about the only situation I can think of which would affect graphic appearance very much other than the impact of font sizes which I mentioned above.



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Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks a lot!
I tried changing some of the content margins and it works great. It seems that it was - as you've suggested it - pretty much a problem with text not having enough space to be placed in. Changing the margins did the trick. Again, thanks a lot!

Greetings from Vienna in good ol' Europe!
Stefan



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