Different resolutions

[Leslie Isaacs]

Hello All

What is the best way of coping with different users (working from different
PCs) having different screen resolutions set? Obviously I can design a
front-end form that will fit the screen with the largest resolution set, but
that form only takes up a quarter of the screen for users with a smaller
resolution. I know I could design the form to fill the screen at a small
resolution, and have scroll bars for those users with large resolution, but
this looks untidy and risks users being unawre of certain controls (this is
a new application). I have tried having two separate forms - one big one
small - with users choosing the one they want, but this gets messy because
certain reports etc take some parameter values from the form so I either
have to create a duplicate set of reports etc., or I have to open both forms
with the chosen one on top.

Is there a way of access reading the resolution that has been set, and
adjusting the form size accordingly? Or is there a better way altogether?

I would be very grateful for any help.

Many thanks.
Leslie Isaacs

 

[Allen Browne]

Get the "MS Access Developers Handbook" by Ken Getz et al, published by
Sybex.

Chapter 8 (from memory, may be different in different versions) about Forms
deals with this issue, and explains how to resize the form and its controls
based on the user's screen resolution.

FWIW, my view is that this approach is unhelpful. It's not only
messy--especially where you have controls that contain other controls such
as option groups containing option buttons with labels attached--but I
personally detest software that makes a mockery out of my purposely chosen
high res screen by forcing me to waste all that real estate by resizing
itself to take up the whole screen.

 

[Leslie Isaacs]

Hello Allen

Thanks for your reply.

So what do you do?

The way I see it, the only alternatives to resizing the form and all its
controls (which I agree must be laborious amd messy) are either to force
everyone to use a common (my) screen res, or to give them the scroll bars.
Neither of these is great.

Why can't life be simple?!

Les.

 

[Baz]

Hello All

What is the best way of coping with different users (working from different
PCs) having different screen resolutions set? Obviously I can design a
front-end form that will fit the screen with the largest resolution set, but
that form only takes up a quarter of the screen for users with a smaller
resolution. I know I could design the form to fill the screen at a small
resolution, and have scroll bars for those users with large resolution, but
this looks untidy and risks users being unawre of certain controls (this is
a new application). I have tried having two separate forms - one big one
small - with users choosing the one they want, but this gets messy because
certain reports etc take some parameter values from the form so I either
have to create a duplicate set of reports etc., or I have to open both forms
with the chosen one on top.

Is there a way of access reading the resolution that has been set, and
adjusting the form size accordingly? Or is there a better way altogether?

I would be very grateful for any help.

Many thanks.
Leslie Isaacs

The Access 2002 Developers Handbook contains an extensive section on doing
exactly this, plus all the necessary code wrapped up in a bunch of class
modules. It works pretty darned well.

 

[Allen Browne]

What I do is design apps for the minimum resolution the client needs.
800x600 is safe; 1024x768 is not an uncommon minimum now.

Part of this reflects my coding style though. I write *really* flexible
interfaces, where users can double-click combos and other fields to
drill-down to the data behind them, so there are myriads of ways to get from
one place in an app to another. I find that experienced users (not
beginners/casual users) love this kind of flexibility, in contrast to the
wizard style where they must complete a sequence in a given order, and can
only back up or cancel out if they don't complete a sequence exactly.
Therefore they quite regularly have multiple windows up at once, and I see
no need for any one screen to use up all the real estate. The larger
resolution they have, the more things they can see on screen at once.

 

[Ron Weiner]

Leslie

I absolutely 100% agree with Allen. Basically what I do is to look at the
customer base I am targeting the app for and work from there. In most of
the applications I have done over the last couple years I have targeted the
apps to work on a computer screen with a minimum resolution of 800 by 600.
I design all of the screens to fit in an 800x600 box. I abhor scrolling
screens, and avoid them where ever possible.

This does mean my app will only take up a small part of the screen on a
system that has a 1280 x 1024 resolution, and an even smaller part of the
total real estate on systems with dual 1280 x 1024 monitors, but all of the
elements on the screen are readable and useable because I designed them to
be so.

If the text in an 8 point Tahoma font is readable in just about any
resolution and any monitor size then why would you want to write a lot of
code that messed around with it ONLY to make it fit the available size of
the screen. To my way of thinking you are just making the application
slower, bigger, and introducing additional points for failure along the way.

IMO Design well thought out, easy to use and understand screens, that look
good in the minimum screen resolution you decide to target based on your
customers requirements.

Ron W
www.WorksRite.com

 

[Leslie Isaacs]

Thanks to all for your advice.
I will look again at my form design!
Les