Screen Resolution (OpenInsight 32-Bit)
At 31 MAY 2004 02:07:37AM William Ng wrote:
Hello,
I have a design question which i would like to ask?It is regarding the screen resolution to use for development.The application develop will be deployed to various user with different resolution and screen sizes.So when we design the form, what resolution, font type, font size,….. would u all recommend?
At 31 MAY 2004 04:46AM Ray Chan wrote:
William,
Others no doubt will pipe in, but the minimum we design for is 800 x 600. That is, we have an MDI frame and within that forms must be fully viewable(excluding multiple page forms with tabs) without the need to scroll. Of course, I do my development in 1400 so I have to remember to check . We encourage people to use 17" flat panel monitors, but some will just stick with the 15" flat panel for costs. There are some new stuff that we are working on where we may have no choice, but to raise this minimum requirement to 1024. Interesting, if you look at OI 7, the minimum resolution for this is now 1024. See how things change .
When we started our conversion from AREV to OI, our default font was MS San Serif, 8. We have since changed to Tahoma 8. However, I can tell that we have deviated from time to time, e.g, we may use Bold and/or increase the font on selected forms to draw the desired attention.
Other developers have reference the Microsoft manaul for development within Windows. If you search here you may find reference to it and a link.
Are you doing an AREV conversion to OI? Or is this a new App that you are developing in OI?
Ray Chan
At 31 MAY 2004 01:13PM Donald Bakke wrote:
William,
Ray had a lot of good things to say. However, it seems as if you have no control over the resolution that your applications will be deployed on. If that is the case, then you should determine what is the probable lowest resolution and design for that. That way no one has to worry about forms that won't fit on the desktop or having to use scrollbars to see all the data.
Hopefully the worst case scenario will be 800x600 or 1024x768. I would be really surprised if anybody is still using 640x480 (that is, on a machine capable of running Win2000 or WinXP). As Ray mentioned, if you develop in a higher resolution then you need to be careful and make sure your windows don't get too big. One approach we take is to create some sample forms pre-sized to fit perfectly in our lowest supported resolution. Then we save-as those as the starting point of a new window.
dbakke@srpcs.com
At 31 MAY 2004 03:51PM Ray Chan wrote:
William,
I see that Don responded. If I had any good comments to make, it's because Don has patiently taught me alot about Windows development and has generously helped many developers thru their conversion from AREV to OI.
At the last RTI conference, Don Bakke presented SRP's Framework for windows development. If you ask, he may still have copies from that presentation and e-mail/mail them to you. I didn't attend that conference.
Good luck,
Ray Chan
At 01 JUN 2004 03:15AM William Ng wrote:
I am converting an old arev system to oi7.But i think this is a problem all windows developer will face because new monitors with higher resolution and sizes keep on comming up.So i thought i ask for some recommendation from the gurus here.
At 01 JUN 2004 03:23AM William Ng wrote:
The thing is if i were to develop in lower resolution, if the user have a higher resolution monitor, the form will appear with blank spaces on the left and bottom and if i develop with a higher resolution, those user with lower resolution will need to scroll.
So, this seems like a problem in windows development.In the Dos era, we do not have this problem, because no resolution to choose.So, i am just asking around to see if the gurus here have any solution for this problem.Thanks to all for the reply.I have other question that i have just posted as well.
At 01 JUN 2004 03:34AM Donald Bakke wrote:
William,
The only reason your users would see so much blank space is if your forms autosized to the current resolution. The only time I see this is when the target resolution is fixed and the nature of the application is meant to work as a turnkey system.
If you are worried about your end users resizing the forms when running under a high resolution, you can set your controls to a mixture of autosized height/width as well as anchoring them. You can also trap the SIZE event to force your windows to snap back to their design time size. Finally, you can always design your forms to have a thin or dialog frame.
dbakke@srpcs.com