Grrrrrr.... WB config won't fit 800x600

We had to design WBconfig to allocate enough space for the various controls.  Making it smaller would result in a worse user experience for every user.  A window which fits well at 800x600 would look silly on a 24" or 30" monitor for example.

You should be able to add some resolutions between 800x600 and 1024x768 as most graphics cards support custom resolutions.  My ATI card on Windows Vista offers a number of resolutions between those two.  848x648 and 960x720.  I think 960x720 would be most suitable for you as it would give a similar size to 1024x768 at 105% dpi.

How to add them will depend on what graphics card you have.  There is a tool called powerstrip which may work for most graphics cards but you should be able to do it with other free tools as well but they will be specific to your graphics card (ATI or NVIDIA usually).

Why can't you simply do like most other applications do, and allow the window to be resizable and add horizontal & vertical scroll bars as needed?

Non-resizable configuration window for an application which is designed to customize your desktop seems pretty silly in the first place.

Neil,

The resolution you suggest is not available on either of my monitors. The nVidia card I have will create a pseudo resolution that is really displayed at 800x600, but requires me to run the mouse up against the side of the screen to scroll the unseen portion of the screen into view. That's not acceptable. For health reasons, I have to minimize keyboard and mouse use, and having to scroll off the edge the screen constantly will not help my already surly disposition.

Another thing that has been bothering me is that even when I have set the resolution at the psuedo 960x720 or true 1024x720, the Config window pops up with the title bar off the top of the screen.I have to effect a move operation from the task bar to get it down to I can move it around with the mouse as required. At true 800x600, the window doesn't even display with a title bar or frame. When you move it, the titlebar suddenly appears, but looks like a tool window titlebar, and then disappears again.

Another point, I see all sorts of wasted space in your configuration window. Why not condense it down a little? Or try TechnoJunky's suggestion to have the window resizable and with scroll bars, so it can be resized if the user wants. I'm sure I can deal with at least one window that I have to scroll around in. I surely hope that these oversights will be corrected soon...


--
LuDean Marvin

-- --
"Speech-recognition in use. It makes mistakes, I correct some."
Eric S. Johansson

You could try a higher resolution and use WB configs font overrides to increase font size...it dosnt mess up skins nearly as bad as dpi settings.  

Unfortunately the space around controls is there for a very good reason.  Removing it would make the application feel crampt and the end result is the user would be less comfortable with using it. 

It would also give the impression that the application is more complicated to the average user.

In general configuration windows are non sizable as the information contained within them is fixed.  There is little point resizing a window full of checkboxes as the dialog was originally designed to fit them.

I would suggest you download powerstrip as that may give you a non scrolling resolution.

We will look into the titlebar being offscreen at 1024x768 as that would appear to be a bug as there is plenty of space for it to fit into.

I'm running 1024x768 (fixed - no option to change) and WB config now always opens at the very top of the screen stopping at the top edge of the right corner buttons

Neil,

Please check into the other bug I mentioned as well... the problem of no title bar or frame displayed around the WB6 Configuration at 800x600. It only displays a title bar momentarily when you click and drag the window from the missing area above the window, and then it promptly vanishes again. The rest of the frame remains invisible throughout. The title bar that does appear is the old windows classic version. I am using a Biostar nVidia GeForce 6800 XE, 256 mg DDR AGP video card. I am using the Harmony skin by vStyler.

At least once, I have also had an IE6 window popup without frames and title bar.

I would like to protest having to spend 30 dollars for another program to get your program to work at 800x600 that by all rights should be fully functional at 800x600!


--
LuDean Marvin

-- --
"Speech-recognition in use. It makes mistakes, I correct some."
Eric S. Johansson

Braniac,

For all of the the skins I use, I have edited the fonts to fit my eysesight. I quote my original post...

"Many of the programs in Windows still have hardwired text that were really designed for 800 x 600 screen resolutions. At 1024 x 768 I have often resorted to the use of a magnifying lens to read the fine print."

When I talk of "hard-wired" text, I mean text that is not controlled by WB or the advanced controls. Many of these windows that display the hardwired text are warning windows that contain critical information and warnings for the safe and efficient use of the computer. I would like to add that even more recent programs like Windows Live Mail have unaceptably small hardwired fonts, and is even one of the reasons (not the sole one however) why I went back to 800x600.

In fact, even at 1024x768 at 105% dpi, I was *straining* to see all this hardwired text (which is impossible for me to read at normal dpi), but at the time it represented the best compromise between distortion and my eyesight. Well my eyesight isn't getting any better and I am less willing to accept distortions in my favorite skins.

I am seriously thinking I made a mistake upgrading to 6.0. I wonder, do you think they would let me have my money back?

--
LuDean Marvin

-- --
"Speech-recognition in use. It makes mistakes, I correct some."
Eric S. Johansson

the WB configuration dialog used to work just fine -- now it doesn't adjust properly for DPI configuration. Some stuff is off screen including the dialog for excluding applications from windowblinds. Can't Stardock at least make the configuration dialog window resizeable?

Are you listening to your customers Neil?

I don't mean to sound harsh here... but remember the old phrase "you can please some of the people some of the time and you can please some of the people all of the time... but you can't please all of the people all of the time."

That seems to be the case. Stardock has designed it's software to please 99 percent of the people... and you, unfortunately, are part of the one percent. They can't please the one percent at the expense of the 99.

99.9%   

well, you two aren't the programmers. I've been around since version 4 and Neil has never said anything like that, he's always listened ... and windowblinds has gone through a bunch of funny quirks that got ironed out when people provided input. I can still remember the one about the random bit patterns drawn on various window elements. WB has been a lot of fun over the years. I know some of the problems are the basic limitations of Microsoft's OS. It's just that the per app tab has disappeared from my configuration window and I have a few apps that don't work well with WB -- mainly apps that skin themselves.

Recently I have been finding a lot of sites where text gets written on top of text and I'm beginning to wonder whether it is windowblinds or maybe too many extensions added to Firefox...

As a software systems architect, I am a bit taken aback by Neil's responses. I certainly hope that he doesn't speak for all of Stardock. A user requesting that an application configuration screen "fit" on 800 x 600 resolution is not outlandish or even unreasonable. I think the UI for WB is unique, but perhaps it's too "busy". Perhaps a smaller configuration UI with more tabs would be a more user-friendly experience. I can't say how many folks still use 800 x 600, but with all of the Section 508 (accessibility) initiatives at many software companies, I would hope that Stardock would consider all users and not just most users. @RPGFX - I don't agree that your cliché is applicable here as gardenerstouch is not asking for a feature or an enhancement per se. He's asking for something very reasonable. I believe it is still best practice to to build applications (in this case a config UI) using an 800x600 screen resolution.

I agree with Neil and disagree with Tryzub (no mater how cool his nick is).  Stardock apps are complicated enough.  part of the problem is that they can do so much and the interface can get cluttered very quickly.  If, as you say, it's too busy now, compacting and adding tabs would confuse as much as clarify.
I'd bet that less than 5% of WB clients use 800x600.

It would be good to support 800x600 in some way but I wouldn't set that as my lower limit; it'd be more like a fallback mode.

I'm confused. I also have problems seeing small icons, print etc, so I just go into properties change font size to large or extra large, go into advanced properties and change the font sizes as needed. I'm running WB6 on my laptop at 1280x800. Occasionally I have to change the font size of the menu so it doesn't run off the screen but usually I have no problem at all. Yeah, sometimes it's a nuisance but it WORKS! gardenerstouch should be able to do this at 1024x768.

nazcalito: The per app tab is under settings. (change the look of an app).  Your webpage rendering issue does not sound like WB as WB does not render webpage text.

Tryzub: Limiting the window to 800x600 screen res (which would end up being about 700x540) would produce a window that was unacceptably small on higher end systems (a large percentage of our users) and the UI would be squashed in.  This is why the size of wbconfig has been slowly increasing in size from version to version as the average screen size increases.

Trying to put everything in lots of tabs just ends up confusing the user.

I would strongly advise anyone with vision problems to consider the purchase of a large TFT display.  Avoid the 20" and 17" displays as they have smaller dots.  A 22" is probably ideal and the price of these has dropped to mass market prices now.

When combined with a high dpi setting you get a reasonable amount of space as well as large text.  Windows Vista is especially useful for this as on a Aero Glass capable machine it can run high dpi while being compatible with all those apps which did not handle large dpi well (As long as you disable the option to run Windows XP style dpi scaling)

One of the nice things about wbconfig is it is fully dpi aware which means it is ready for those 200 dpi screens that Microsoft have been promising since the XP beta so it will work well with higher dpi settings.

Well, just installed Stardock stuff today on my new lil' ASUS eee PC 701 with 800x480 resolution (can go up to 800x600 if you want to scroll around...)...

As noted above, since I can't resize WindowBlind windows, I can't use it properly since I have no way to get to bottom of screen!

As suggested, please make windows resizable!!!

THANKS!

Mark
Frustrated WB user....

Does the ASUS eee have sufficient power to run WB well?

Tigerlady....

You have to have telescopes for eyes if you can get along with 1024x768 on a 17" monitor. The fact of the matter is that there is a hell of alot programs out there that use hardwired fonts in many parts of their UIs. I honestly don't know what the programmers were thinking when they wrote them with fonts that can only be seen comfortably at 800x600. With the exception of changing the the DPI settings, these cannot be changed by any other setting in Windows or WB. While I was at 1024X768, I had Windows set for Extra Large fonts and had WB set for 20% larger than the skin defaults. I also changed the DPI settings to 105% of normal, but this was a compromise between my eyesight and the distortions created by it in the skins. I am finding more and more of the skins I like getting wacked out of shape at this setting.

I'm stuck with a 17" CRT at work and I use 1024x768 without a problem (and I have terrible vision, astigmatisms in BOTH eyes). Here at home I'm on a 24" widescreen with 1920x1200.

I can only seriously say....if it's THAT bad, get a bigger monitor (like Neil has said). The prices have really come down a lot.

Bebi Bulma,

You may be flush with cash and can afford one at current prices, but I am disabled and have to live on a poverty income. The cheapest 22" monitor I could find is still about 200 dollars (including taxes and shipping) over my price range.

Part of the problem with my own vision is that my eyes are so near sighted that I have to wear the proverbial coke bottles for glasses. The higher the correction for nearsightedness, the smaller the image created when it finally gets passed through to my eyes. As a rather extreme illustration, try looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Although I have only some mild astigmatism, what really annoys me the most is all the "garbage" floating around in my vision. People with my extreme correction typically have an area of fluid just behind the iris rather than the usual viscous jelly. Various protiens floating in the liquid often agglutinate into vision blocking blobs, and they increase in number and size as you age. It's not uncommon to see me whirling my head around or knocking myself up the side of my head while trying to dislodge a particluarly large one that has settled into the midddle of my sight. I have, on occasion, elicited some strange looks from people who have observed me doing this.

--
LuDean Marvin

-- --
"Speech-recognition in use. It makes mistakes, I correct some."
Eric S. Johansson

Just an additional note... I rolled back to WB 5.51, and found the same problems with the oversized configuration interface and the misssing frames and title bars.

--
LuDean Marvin

-- --
"Speech-recognition in use. It makes mistakes, I correct some."
Eric S. Johansson

Again, not meaning to sound harsh here... but I just bought a 22" widescreen monitor at Target for $169. And I see them regularly at a variety of places for around 200. So unless your price range is ZERO, you just aren't shopping around good enough.





I would bet FAR LESS than 5 percent. 800x600 resolution is obsolete these days... the harsh reality is, if programs aren't working for you at that res, it's time for you to upgrade, not for developers to step backwards.

One more note. Can't we compare this to a high end video game, and a user with a lousy on board video card? Would the programmers be expected to make the graphics of the game crappy to accommodate the one guy with the lousy video card? No. If the guy wants to play the game, he needs to go out and buy a new video card.

Good question....I think so, but can't say for 100% sure as I sold eee recently...very nice fun lil' lappy, but decided to go for an even smaller device, OQO 02....   

Now, wondering whether or not I should try WB, etc on it....has 5" display, 800x480 or 800x600 resolution, Via 1.6 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM....

Thanks!