Re: Auto resize forms

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Dear Allen:

Now, I tried that once. I put a monitor on its side. The picture went
blank, and there was a high tension electrical crackle. Haven't tried it
again since. I thought I was lucky it wasn't destroyed. So, do you buy a
monitor that says you can put it on its side? And how do you change the
image 90 degrees? Finally, how do you set up the application? Do you open
it twice, once on each monitor?

Tom Ellison


"Allen Browne" <AllenBrowne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ukBkwgQMGHA.536@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks for sharing, Tom.

So SuperSlueth has a comparision, I also nominate 1024x768 as the minimum
target resolution when we write the specification for the app unless they
require otherwise, and I don't downsize it for them.

I recently saw one of my apps running at 800x600 with Windows set to very
large fonts. It looked weird, with less than a dozen rows filling the
entire screen. The user was sitting about 4 inches away from the screen,
so I guess she had some kind of visual impairment, and it was a good
reminder that I need to consider those users when I design.

For development, I use 2 x 19" monitors @ 1280 x 960. The main Access
window is on the left monitor, with the form (or whatever) open in design
view. The right monitor shows the VBA code, and is flipped on its edge
(portrait mode), so I can see an entire A4 page of code at once plus the
form and its controls and field list on the other monitor at the same
time.

--
Allen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia.
Tips for Access users - http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html
Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org.

"Tom Ellison" <tellison@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uvFQuOMMGHA.2580@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dear Allen:

So true. My applications will run at 800x600 and below, but the fonts
become much less distinct at that level and below. I generally make
1024x768 the lowest res for which I design, and require that setting at
my installations. I find I can shrink to this res and have good quality.
I simultaneously strongly recommend monitors of at least 19".

Nice as they are, the flat panels don't have much higer res that this.
When I design, I'm at 1600x1200 all the time. Doing this, and using a
big monitor is much more productive for me, but I'm always putting a lot
of things on the screen while I work.

It's hard to do, but I find I must convey the idea that to use old
equipment that is not up to today's standards is a waste of productivity.
There are often considerable productivity gains to be had at higher res,
and I fully intend to exploit them in the software I create. Having an
adequate monitor is a price you pay to get that productivity. There's no
way around it.

Given an adequate monitor size, my applications always have print as
large or larger than your newspaper. People who think nothing of reading
their newspaper complain this is too small. I carry a newspaper along
and show them its bigger than the newspaper's font. The problem is, they
want to put their flat panel 3' away, so they can gain desk space. This
is absurd. If the computer is your main productivity tool, where you
work for hours a day, then put the face of the monitor no farther away
than you would put a CRT monitor. The desk space you save is behind the
monitor, which isn't worth the extra price of the flat panel. If you
want the desk space in front of the monitor, then you're going to need a
23" screen to get the same effect. The price of that cools their ardor.
The cause of the problem is built into the laws of physics. "You can't
fool mother nature."

Tom Ellison


"Allen Browne" <AllenBrowne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23vluLdJMGHA.3260@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Yes, that sounds about right.

The forms still have be to designed to be usable at the lowest
resolution the users could have, i.e. you cannot pack a screen full of
8-pt text boxes at 1280x1204 and still expect it to be readable when
"shrunk" to 640x480. As a result, you need to ask what is the smallest
resolution they want to be use, and design for that. In practice, this
means that you are actually enlarging if you use this technique, as
proportionally shrinking does not work very well.

If you want the API call to read teh current screen settings:
http://vbnet.mvps.org/index.html?code/screen/displaysettings.htm

You can then proportionally resize upwards, paying special attention to
controls that contain other controls (such as option groups that contain
buttons that have attached labels) an so on.

"SuperSlueth" <np121@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:hhs0v1t8ld0h8rr76g20rpe18av91vm72p@xxxxxxxxxx
It's was requested by our users, it's not so much the high resolution.
More the lower resolution users would like it to shrink to fit their
screens.

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:25:30 +0800, "Allen Browne"
<AllenBrowne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If you want to do this, you are probably ready to buy the MS Access
Developers Handbook, by Ken Getz et al, published by Sybex. From
memory, it
is chapter 8 that contains this code.

Before you do this, though, you might like to reconsider whether it is
a
good idea. I for one absolutely hate software that assumes if I have
big
screen that it ought to use all that space. The reason I bought a large
screen is so I could see lots of things at once, not so some idiot
programmer could consume the whole thing with his application.




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