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Make icons in 'Show hidden icons' LARGE ?

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IainB:
@PhilB66: Thanks. Interesting. Now we know.
So "16/20/24 pixels only" is what we have. A big mistake by Microsoft, but a mistake it should be easy to correct. Maybe in W8 ?
-Curt (April 24, 2012, 12:52 PM)
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I wonder why that particular limitation had to be set though?
I suppose it could make the Taskbar too fat/cluttered.

vlastimil:
Why? In the early Windows days (NT4 time), every icon on the used to be 16x16px. In Windows 7, the main application icons got bigger 32x32, but system tray icons stayed the same. These icons are for less important and less frequently used applications. (If you use a particular application via its system tray icon a lot, maybe you should re-configure it to behave like a normal application and not place its icon in the system tray. Then it would have the normal size in Win7.)

Back to the 24/20/16 sizes. The base size is still 16px and these other sizes are just multiplies of 16 in higher DPI modes: 16px*125% = 20px and 16px*150% = 24px. You cannot use 24x24 system tray icons in the normal 100% (96DPI) mode.

What Curt mentioned abode about the size of the system tray icons not changing after switching to 125% is actually not true. The tray icons got bigger - to 20x20px, but since everything else got bigger too, it is very hard to notice. A separate issue is that many authors do not optimize for higher DPI modes and only provide 16x16 icon. This icon is then scaled to 20x20px by windows and you'll notice some jaggies.

tomos:
My experience with enlarging everything (laptop with win7, classic theme, to 125% I think) was fairly disastrous** and often very ugly.


? Maybe the easiest solution would be windows magnifier ?

when you need to check the icons out, use the Winkey and plus (+) symbol to enlarge the screen. Zooms in wherever the mouse is. If you want to go back to 100%, you have to release the Winkey and then press it again with the minus (-) symbol. A magnifier symbol stays active, you can close this by clicking it first, then close.


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** problem was that dialogues were often too big for the screen - windows dialogues as well. Lots of software doesnt cater well to this option. There's loads of space wasted - wanting the text/icons bigger doesnt mean we want to waste space - especially not on a laptop with average resolution (as of 2011 anyways) and a 16:9 screen

IainB:
My experience with enlarging everything (laptop with win7, classic theme, to 125% I think) was fairly disastrous** and often very ugly.
? Maybe the easiest solution would be windows magnifier ?
when you need to check the icons out, use the Winkey and plus (+) symbol to enlarge the screen. Zooms in wherever the mouse is. If you want to go back to 100%, you have to release the Winkey and then press it again with the minus (-) symbol. A magnifier symbol stays active, you can close this by clicking it first, then close.
-tomos (April 26, 2012, 05:09 AM)
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Yes, "Ugly" was what I thought it was.
Thanks for the tip re Winkey and Plus/Minus key. I hadn't known that one. Handy.

tomos:
Thanks for the tip re Winkey and Plus/Minus key. I hadn't known that one. Handy.
-IainB (April 26, 2012, 10:24 AM)
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Dont remember where I picked that one up, but I noticed an article about the magnifier in Windows Secrets newsletter a while back: they were saying to go to the start menu and type m a g n i . .
So I sent them a mail saying the same as above. They responded by sending me a $25 voucher with Amazon.com - so I reckon they didnt know it either. I didnt know they gave vouchers, but I was happy to get it ;-)

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