Assessing WXGA/WXGA+/WUXGA screens via printing

If you are wondering about icon and font sizes on WXGA, WSXGA+ and WUXGA screens, your best option is to print pictures of such screens at their true sizes. Then, for instance, you will be able to see whether icons and fonts look big enough for your eyes under WUXGA.

Attached is a screenshot from my WUXGA screen. You may save this file and print it from MS Paint to get an idea about how icons and fonts look on WUXGA under 120 DPI. On most printers the picture will be split across two pages. By cutting and pasting the printouts, you will get a picture of the same size as my screen. Full explanations are given at the Dell General forum in the post

http://notebookforums.com/showthread...869#post354869

Since several Windows settings affect the screen's output, it is better to know their values for a given screenshot. My screenshot was produced under the following settings:

1. DPI setting: "Large size (120 DPI)" [Dell's default]

To check (or change) this setting, right-click on the desktop, select Properties | Settings | Advanced | General | DPI setting. The factory default 120 DPI makes (almost) everything bigger by 125% relative to "Normal size (96 DPI)".

2. Registry setting UseHR=0 [Dell's default being UseHR=1]

To check (or change) this setting, click Start | Run, type "regedit" (without the quotes), click OK, and click on the "+" signs in the left pane until you navigate to the branch

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]

and then find UseHR=0 in the right pane.

3. Theme: Windows XP, Desktop: None, Appearance: Windows XP style, font size Normal

4. ClearType and "use large icons" in Effects

To check (or change) these settings, right-click on the desktop, select Properties | Appearance | Effects.

NOTE: If you view this screenshot in Internet Explorer, and the fonts look jagged, hover your cursor on the screenshot until you see a small square icon in the lower right corner; clicking this icons will "Expand to regular size", thus eliminating the jaggedness.

EDIT: Attached another screenshot with DPI setting "Normal size (96 DPI)".

V.B.:

Your screenshot looks great! Thanks a lot!

In fact your picture looked so fine on my WUXGA screen, with all fonts being perfectly readable, that I started wondering about your Windows settings. Namely, your taskbar fonts look identical to those in my first screenshot with 120 DPI (wuxga120.png). So are you running at 120 DPI? Are you using the Windows XP theme with normal font sizes, or perhaps some tuned version of another scheme? Knowing these details would allow users to appreciate what they are seeing more fully.

Thanks for your detailed explanations.

The most important point is that we are both using 120 DPI (the other differences in our settings seem minor in this case). At 120 DPI, our fonts look bigger by about 9% than on WSXGA+ at 96 DPI. I guess 96 DPI is a bit too small for you, just as for me.

As for UseHR, I included it's value because my screenshot showed IE as well. Strange that you don't have it in the registry, since I heard that UseHR=1 is Dell's default. But maybe you reformated and installed Windows from scratch?

MitchellO:

This thread (and its brother in the Dell General forum) is supposed to help users who face your dilemma. Sorry if the explanations given in the other thread were insufficient. Let me reiterate a couple of points here.

Simply speaking, to see true font sizes in the screenshots linked above, you would have to view them on a 15.4" WUXGA monitor. On your monitor everything was reduced almost twice (by the factor of 0.533). Further, you didn't specify whether your monitor is CRT or LCD. For such reductions, an LCD monitor should produce "jagged" fonts (due to its discrete pixel nature which prohibits smooth interpolations as in CRT monitors).

Anyway, if you found these screenshots readable, your eyes are excellent, and hence WUXGA would be good for you, because it provides more workspace.

Still, for safety, I would advise you to print those screenshots (as explained in the companion thread) to see the fonts at their true sizes.

As for web surfing, my first two screenshots show the forum's initial page, with which of course you are familiar on your monitor. If you print them, you will know what to expect.

Typical WUXGA (or WSXGA+) users complain about viewing sites designed for SVGA 800x600 monitors with fixed fonts, which can't be enlarged in the Internet Explorer. I could produce screenshots with two IE windows for such sites, side by side. But if you wish to see how WUXGA would perform in your normal use, just tell me which sites to select in a screenshot.

Well, V.B., you mentioned yet another aspect of IE (window size), whereas most users complain about IE's failure to enlarge fonts where needed (apparently Firefox does better, but still screws up when pictures/tables are present, whereas Opera can handle both; let's leave this for other threads).

Actually, since I'm cheating with WUXGA by running 120 DPI (just like you), I can't have two IE windows side by side for sites designed for 800x600. This would be viable for WUXGA at 96 DPI, but the additional effort in shifting newly opened windows is not worthile for me.

Here the main problem is that MS still doesn't allow us to configure IE to open new windows according to some logical scheme.

Here is how it works for me. I have never changed IE's default window size, which looks square on my M60. After a bootup, IE keeps opening windows shifted nicely to the right, essentially by the right margin you see on this forum. This works well when I visit this forum, opening
and closing IE windows for several threads. However, after a while, IE develops memory, so that even if just the initial site window remains, a new window opens much farther to the right, not just by the usual offset. This annoys me a bit. I just use Alt-Tab to switch between IE windows and my editor where I compose my longer replies. In effect, I don't care about displaying two IE windows at the same time; I only need to see my editor window and the post I'm replying to.

Since pictures are better than words in this case, I include a screenshot (WUXGA at 120 DPI, my standard settings).

Okle:

Once you get your machine, please post a screenshot!