Sizing Parent Window

[Susan Smith]

Hi all,

Up til now, I have continued to use the default 80 columns by 24 rows for my parent windows, even though I'm using BR 4.2 which allows more flexibility. I have a few listviews to build that require a wider screen. Therefore, I need to make my default parent window wider (and possibly taller if that ratio needs to remain).

Aside from the obvious (how wide does the listview need to be), what proportions should I consider for this new size? For those of you using larger windows, do you have an optimum size that you prefer to use? Do you keep the ratio the same as 80x24 screens? My users are not using widescreens at this point. They still have 17" standard LCD monitors and most of them run their BR programs maximized.

Thanks for any insight you can give me. I have a bigger monitor than they use and my screens look much nicer on MY computer than on theirs. <sigh>

-- Susan

[gtisdale]

Depends on a few factors including size of the average monitor in use and age of the operator. Geezers like me don't like our fonts too small so that is a consideration, paricularly if you are using smaller sized screen fonts like [SMALL] . For my purposes I tried different sizes when the capability first arose and decided to standardize at 30x90, however, I still break out of that from time to time by issuing a CONFIG MIN FONT and forcing the whole window to another size such as doing data entrey on a form (using a fraphic formas a background and doing rinputs on top of it). In this setup you can get the screen to scroll as you do the

[GomezL]

With BR 4.2 & Parent=None, creating completely new windows is very easy.

My initial thought is to keep my "Old Screens" at the old 24x80, but make the 'POP-UP' screens wider to allow for more information.

One thing to keep in mind, new widescreen monitors are crazy inexpensive!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824236068

$119.99 /w Free Shipping!

The above link is for an ASUS VW195T-P Black 19" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 2000 :1 ASCR Built-in Speakers


My point is if you are going to spend a lot of resources developing new programs, it might be a better value for your customer to upgrade to wide screen LCD monitors.

[Susan Smith]

George,

Can you explain a bit more about CONFIG MIN FONT? I read what's in the wiki on it, but I really don't understand its purpose and what it can do for me. My initial impression is that by setting a minimum font size, dragging the screen operates more like standard windows behavior where the screen stays the same size, but you see more or less of it. Is that it?

FYI:
There are really 3 or 4 places in this system where I need windows wider than 80 columns: our primary "member" screen which is where the user "sits" most of the day, and then several listviews which are just too wide for 80 columns unless I use small fonts. There are 12 users. Only two of those are under 40. Most are over 60. So small fonts will probably be an issue here.

-- Susan

[Susan Smith]

Luis,

I will try to get them to upgrade their monitors, but I don't really have any control over that of course. There are 12-13 users, and it might be a bit presumptuous of me to require a larger monitor. However, you make a good point because some of my programs look awful on their system which bothers me. They look fine when I'm developing them, and then when I'm out at the client's office, I'm dismayed at how amateurish and lousy they look.

I'll work on this to see if it's possible.

-- Susan

[John]

on a 19" monitor I like to code in a console screen sized at 40x100. I don't even maxamize it. I suggest that you make a function like fnsession_size that returns session_height and session_width and then make your calculations dynamic - like don't hard code stuff that belongs on the bottom line, use session_height instead and stuff that should go up to the bottom line use session_height-1, etc this way you can shift your sizes around and everything will continue to work perfectly... if you really wanted you could even expose these settings to the end user and just use 24x80 as the minimum.

my opinion is that if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.

-john

[Susan Smith]

Interesting. I tried playing with Config Min_FontSize and I discovered that buttonrow buttons do not respond to it. Regular buttons do, but not buttonrow buttons. Buttonrow buttons will continue to be resized when you resized the screen as if they are Config Min_FontSize 0x0.

I guess that's a reason to make a taller default screen size and manually place buttons on it rather than using buttonrows.

Now, is my assumption correct that how large the fonts LOOK under Config Min_FontSize will depend upon the monitor size and resolution? In other words, will varying the hardware configuration mean that my programs won't look the same for everybody under Config Min_FontSize ?

-- Susan

[Rick Graham]

A few comments about screen size and monitor size:
Monitors size is measured diagonally; therefore a widescreen monitor has less vertical real estate than a standard monitor with a 4X3 aspect ratio of the same size. You are able to display fewer rows without scrolling on a widescreen.
Widescreen monitors come in 2 flavors:
Most have a 16X10 aspect ratio, but a lot of the larger sizes are 16X9 to match the high def TV aspect, hence allowing the monitor to be used watch TV and/or movies.
This makes getting your “screens” just right for every user difficult.

BTW: I’m in that 60+ age group, but I have no problem with smaller fonts. I have an eye exam every year and get a new pair of progressive tri-focals every 5 years. I also tell the doc that I sit in front of a computer screen most of the day. So when someone asks if I can “make the words bigger” I suggest that there is an “eye doctor” right down the street.

Rick Graham

[Susan Smith]

Rick,

Thanks for your comments about screen aspect ratio. That certainly is a factor with my code since most of my windows were written on a standard (not widescreen) monitor.

I don't assume that my users can't see well, though there are about 5 of them that ALWAYS run my BR programs maximized, so there may well be an issue there. But I am aware of how lousy the same code can look on different monitors even when they are of the same aspect ratio. I just Emailed the client to ask about their monitor resolution and she said that they are all using 17" standard monitors running at 1024 x 768. That SHOULD be adequate I'd think. I guess these are just awful monitors (old Dells).

I am visually-challenged myself these days (double vision issues due to chronic dry eye syndrome). Therefore, I'm becoming mores sensitive about how things look on a computer screen as well as how much flexibility I can offer my users who DO have vision issues, while still being able to code nice screens that can display the information required.

At this point, I think it just boils down to the fact that their monitors don't display text very well. Maybe I'll play with ClearType to see if I can improve the situation (though I seem to recall that ClearType was mostly for laptops).

-- Susan

[John]

are you running with GUI On and proportional fonts? I think this greatly increases readability - along with not all caps for everything.

[Susan Smith]

Yes, GUI is on. Currently, they are using a non-proportional font (Lucida Console), but in the system rewrite that is underway, it will be all proportional fonts. I never thought of this being an issue though. Thanks.

-- Susan

[bluesfannoz]

Susan
We set Min_Fontsize 16x8

We have found this to be the correct size for our windows to fit on a Non-widescreen monitor running 1024x768 resolution. If they are running below that then they get scroll bars.

Here is what we use for our default main window:
SCREEN OPENDFLT Srow=1,Scol=1,rows=30,cols=80,Picture=[IMG]\background.gif,CAPTION=MAIN WINDOW,MAXIMIZE

Don't know if this really answers your question. But I thought it might help for you to see what we did. On Windows we still default to SYSTEMPC font and on the Mac we use Monaco.

[Susan Smith]

On the contrary Steve, this is exactly what I wanted! I needed to put some things together: Min_Fontsize, default screen rows and columns and monitor size and resolution. Posting your default configuration gives me the perfect place to start and thanks to you post and those that came before it, I now have a much better overall picture of the issues and where I can take them from there

Thank you!

-- Susan