4 ms·

One of the most depressing areas of Windows to look at is the various control panel screens. Some of them, I kid you not, will show different bits of text in up

by ZoFreX 13y ago

One of the most depressing areas of Windows to look at is the various control panel screens. Some of them, I kid you not, will show different bits of text in up to three different sizes. If Windows itself doesn't deal with different DPIs correctly, what kind of example does that set for application developers? Another application that definitely deserves mentioning is Chrome. It looks absolutely terrible. It's really blurry and browsing the web for even a couple of minutes really strains my eyes. If you run high DPI Windows, you're going to need a different browser than Chrome (Firefox looks fine but unsurprisingly does not perform so well at such a high resolution. Internet Explorer is actually not a bad choice - high res and fast)

ghusbands 13y ago
If you can stand to have tiny tabs, set the compatibility mode for Chrome to disable high-DPI scaling and set the default zoom in the browser options to something like 175%. It's a trick that works with many apps.
yummysoup 13y ago
In Windows 8.1 you can override the scaling for individual apps through their properties dialogs. Set Chrome to not scale, then set the zoom within Chrome to be > 100%. The url bar and tabs will be a bit small but the page content will look good.
- wvenable 13y ago
  TIL. I upgraded to Windows 8.1 but I didn't know about this. Anything Java doesn't handle high DPI and will simply be doubled and is a blurry mess. I actually turned off DPI scaling just because of Java but if I can control it on a per-application basis that would be preferable.
- ZoFreX 13y ago
  Awesome tip, thank you. I have an 8.1 license but have to install Windows 7 first, and hadn't bothered with the extra time to upgrade it yet. I know what I will be doing this weekend :)
rsynnott 13y ago
Chrome was a bit broken and jerky when HiDPI Macs showed up, too. It got fixed, and presumably will on Windows, too.
- cnlwsu 13y ago
  Eh, I have a yoga 2 pro like the article and Chrome is working (well it broke so bad I had to reinstall one upgrade, but that aside) Ok... but it has a lot of weird artifacts you notice from time to time like the drop down for the url bar splitting in the middle and the left side ~2em down from right side.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    How do you like the laptop? I broke my MacBook Air and I am looking for a good replacement.

by ZoFreX 13y ago

ghusbands 13y ago

If you can stand to have tiny tabs, set the compatibility mode for Chrome to disable high-DPI scaling and set the default zoom in the browser options to something like 175%. It's a trick that works with many apps.

yummysoup 13y ago

In Windows 8.1 you can override the scaling for individual apps through their properties dialogs. Set Chrome to not scale, then set the zoom within Chrome to be > 100%. The url bar and tabs will be a bit small but the page content will look good.

wvenable 13y ago
TIL. I upgraded to Windows 8.1 but I didn't know about this. Anything Java doesn't handle high DPI and will simply be doubled and is a blurry mess. I actually turned off DPI scaling just because of Java but if I can control it on a per-application basis that would be preferable.
ZoFreX 13y ago
Awesome tip, thank you. I have an 8.1 license but have to install Windows 7 first, and hadn't bothered with the extra time to upgrade it yet. I know what I will be doing this weekend :)

rsynnott 13y ago

Chrome was a bit broken and jerky when HiDPI Macs showed up, too. It got fixed, and presumably will on Windows, too.

cnlwsu 13y ago
Eh, I have a yoga 2 pro like the article and Chrome is working (well it broke so bad I had to reinstall one upgrade, but that aside) Ok... but it has a lot of weird artifacts you notice from time to time like the drop down for the url bar splitting in the middle and the left side ~2em down from right side.
- StavrosK 13y ago
  How do you like the laptop? I broke my MacBook Air and I am looking for a good replacement.