Other Software > Found Deals and Discounts

Database Oasis for $21 on Bits duJour Wed, 4/14/2010

<< < (2/3) > >>

J-Mac:
First, the UI doesn’t seem to work to well on my computer here. The text is overly large and therefore a lot of it is cut off at the end of each line. Also, in most cases the bottom ~10% of all text is cut off. See the screen caps below.
-J-Mac (April 16, 2010, 12:40 PM)
--- End quote ---

Do you use large fonts?  That seems to be the problem from the screenshots that you post.  Many apps aren't developed for large fonts, so when viewed in them, are quite ugly.  It's an easy thing to get around, and I know .NET apps don't seem to have that problem anymore, but in many languages, the developer still has to do it.
-wraith808 (April 18, 2010, 11:43 AM)
--- End quote ---

No - or not really. Depends on "Large" I guess. When I installed Windows 7 I set the text size attribute to 115% of the default; that's a custom setting as the default was microscopic and the next level up was too large. I have a 24" wide screen monitor with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 px. Default size for Win7 looks equivalent to a font size of 5 or 6, which IMO is way too tiny. The current custom setting of 115% doesn’t negatively affect the text in any other app on this machine - and I do have a lot of apps installed; >200.

Jim

wraith808:
That is considered 'large' fonts.  If a developer sets their labels as not autosized, but sized based on their layout and you uniformly switch the font size, this will happen.  In older versions of windows, it was large fonts vs regular fonts- I guess windows 7 lets you change that with greater granularity.  As I said, I'm not saying this isn't their fault- but I bet that if you tried to switch to 100% and tested their application, you wouldn't see this problem.  A bit of information you can pass onto the developer...

J-Mac:
That is considered 'large' fonts.  If a developer sets their labels as not autosized, but sized based on their layout and you uniformly switch the font size, this will happen.  In older versions of windows, it was large fonts vs regular fonts- I guess windows 7 lets you change that with greater granularity.  As I said, I'm not saying this isn't their fault- but I bet that if you tried to switch to 100% and tested their application, you wouldn't see this problem.  A bit of information you can pass onto the developer...
-wraith808 (April 18, 2010, 04:38 PM)
--- End quote ---

I don’t believe that is considered "Large"; just larger than the default, and not by much. First, there is the Text Size Setting dialog that says 150% = Large, 125% = Medium, and 100% = Smaller, as attached below. By those size labels 115% is between Medium and Small, but certainly not "Large". Unless the Win7 UI designers really don’t say what they mean - which is not so far-fetched.  :D

115% made my fonts readable at 1920 x 1200 on my 24" monitor in Windows 7, but not even quite as large as the Windows XP Pro default text size on the same 24" monitor.

Here's the Text Size Setting dialog:

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

Thank you.

Jim

PS - Above I said "First..." and then never got to "second"   :-[  Second, if this was considered a "Large" font then why wouldn’t any other of the 200+ programs installed have the same problem?

wraith808:
PS - Above I said "First..." and then never got to "second"   :-[  Second, if this was considered a "Large" font then why wouldn’t any other of the 200+ programs installed have the same problem?
-J-Mac (April 18, 2010, 10:11 PM)
--- End quote ---

If a developer sets their labels as not autosized, but sized based on their layout and you uniformly switch the font size, this will happen.  In older versions of windows, it was large fonts vs regular fonts- I guess windows 7 lets you change that with greater granularity. 
-wraith808 (April 18, 2010, 04:38 PM)
--- End quote ---

You can easily test by changing your fonts to 100% and seeing if it works.  And by large, I meant larger than normal.  If you code your UI based on the font being 10px then someone sets it to say... 115%, then that same letter that was 10px before will be 11.5px.  And if you set your label to something other than autosize, then for a 10 word label, the text will overflow by 10*1.5px = 15px- large enough to notice.

As I said, I'm not saying this isn't their fault- but I bet that if you tried to switch to 100% and tested their application, you wouldn't see this problem.  A bit of information you can pass onto the developer...
-wraith808 (April 18, 2010, 04:38 PM)
--- End quote ---

It's up to you whether you want to try it by setting your fonts momentarily to 100% and seeing if that is the case and then passing it on to the developer- but things like that tend to get addressed (or you can see the developer's colors) if you give concrete examples to back up your claim rather than the generic "I'm seeing X" message IME.

J-Mac:
Well if that is the case then I will either use the program (Database Oasis) as is - most is still at least readable - or worst case it gets dumped. I'm not even going to try changing the text size to test it. Last time I did when I changed it back a lot of text items were changed and I had a heck of a time getting them all back to what I need. Very similar to when I used XP Pro; I tried changing my resolution to 800 x 600 to accommodate one lousy program which would not render decently at all and the developer insisted that the majority of his users were still using 800 x 600 resolution and that I could just change it for his program and change it back afterward. Of course when I tried that my desktop was a complete mess - icon sizes did not change back automatically - as well as other areas throughout the system. I committed myself to two personal rules then: One, I would not change my resolution willy-nilly to accommodate one app out of the many I use, and two, that I do not need to use the products of any developer who through laziness or lack of programming talent did not update his/her program's UI to keep up with current screen resolutions, monitor sizes, etc. So I will contact the Database Oasis developer to report what I am experiencing here and see just what kind they are - the kind I'll keep or not.

BTW, I recently had a similar experience with another "one program" developer - actually not a developer at all but a person who wanted to develop a specialized database program. He contracted with a software "engineer" to create this program that he had conceived. The initial pricing was outrageously high but later dropped quite a bit - wonder why?!?   :mad:  After installing the program it initially opened its main window. Tiny. After trying and failing to resize the window I measured it: 740 x 570 px. Works out to less than 20% of my total screen size. The text all looked decent - for a little window like that. Proportional is a better way to put it, I guess. I wrote to him but he told me the window size could not be changed and that I should just change my resolution to 800 x 600 and it would look much better. Turns out that wasn’t the only thing I didn't like about his program. Can't scroll with the mouse wheel, can't tab from/to text input boxes, can't use any of the Microsoft shortcuts for text formatting like Ctrl+B, Ctrl+U, etc., or for copy/paste, like Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. This app looks like it was designed to use in DOS Shell on a 10" - 12" monitor. I only got it because it would have done a needed job for me if it had worked, and the price had dropped to the teens so I didn't lose much $. There was no trial for it - I believe because the guy had no idea how to make it work only for a time and then stop. His "software engineer" just signed him up with an online activation outfit; activate once and done.

Oh well, I'll learn one of these days.

Thank you.

Jim

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page