High resolution = tiny words and graphics

[tony873004]

I just got a 21 inch CRT monitor.

I like to set my monitor at 1920x1440 when looking at pictures from my digital camera. The screen is then almost large enough to show the entire picture without reducing the picture's sized and hence resolution.

But then everything else is tiny. For example, I'm in 1920x1440 mode now. I can comfortably read what I'm typing, but it would be nice if it were bigger. But the address bar is unreadable unless I move closer to the monitor. Adjusting Text Size in the view menu only adjusts blocks of HTML text, but doesn't affect web pages that use style sheets.

Choosing "Extra Large Fonts" in the display properties window only makes the words associated with icons larger, but not the icons themselves.

Is there some way to implement a screen-wide "zoom" so text and objects appear the same size as they do when my monitor is set to 1024x768, while still retaining all the crystal-clear resolution of 1920x1440.

It would be nice if the computer kept consistant sizing for all text and icons for all screen resolutions so I could keep my monitor at 1920x1440 all the time without purchasing reading glasses.

 

[chroot]

The obvious solution seems to be to switch back to a resolution with half as many pixels, rather than trying to make everything on the UI twice as big.

What's so hard about switching resolutions? If you don't like opening the Display control panel, there are plenty of third-party products that'll put a button on your taskbar, or associate a keystroke.

- Warren

 

[tony873004]

Switching seems to re-arrange my desktop items, and requires fine adjustments in the monitor settings, such as horizontal size and position. It also takes about 30 seconds (am I that lazy?)

It just seems like there should be some utility where I can tell it that no matter what the resolution, the width of a desktop item should be 5% the width of the screen, the width of a 10 pitch font should be 0.5% the width of the screen, etc. So that all I notice by switching resolutions is that the pictures become clearer.

I didn't know about the 3rd party products. I guess that's why I post my questions here :) . Thanks Warren.

 

[chroot]

On systems that use display PostScript, like NeXT, it literally was that easy to switch screen resolutions without changing the size of on-screen UI elements.

However, Windows is just not that smart. Your best bet is just to tell Windows to use extra-large fonts, but that still won't make icons or other fixed-resolution graphical elements larger.

- Warren

 

[-Job-]

You can make the icons larger i think. Right-click on your desktop -> properties ->in the appearance tag click advanced -> in the window that comes up, in the dropdown menu, select "icon" -> pump the size up. You should also play around with the other items in the dropdown menu to make your desktop more confortable.
I can imagine such a high resolution might slow down your computer a bit though.

 

[ComputerGeek]

Windows does not use vector based graphics for the UI yet, so the bitmaps for the fonts and for the icons get smaller with higher resolutions.