Updates to fix screen resolution errors using different res. monitors

[Holisticmdwf]

Hi Mouser,

I am the person who brought the screen res. problems to your attention for Screenshot Captor, working with a 4K monitor and a lower res. monitor set to different enlargement percentages several weeks ago now.  I am wondering how you are coming along with fixing these problems and also wondering if you have any alpha or beta versions for me to test, or if there is any other way that I can help with the process.  I have tried to get to you via the chat room a couple of times over the last several days to no avail.  It was recommended that I try to contact you here.  I eagerly await the next update that will hopefully resolve these issues.   In the meantime I have been using the Microsoft snipping tool which is not nearly as good as yours!!

Please let me know how it is going.

Thanks,

Holisticmdwf

[Clairvaux]

Hello,

This is just to say "me too". I have just installed Screenshot Captor and Clipboard Help + Spell, and they are unusable for me because a part of the UI is just too tiny to read.

In Screenshot Captor, for instance, the top menu is OK, but the icons are way too small, just as the lower part of the UI (where it says File Name Quick Field, for instance).

My PC :

• Windows 7
• Screen resolution = 1920  x 1200
• DPI setting = 150 %
• Use Windows XP style DPI scaling = Yes

The effect is reminiscent of very old programs developed when screen resolutions were lower, but I see your work is in current development.

I have checked Use Windows XP style DPI scaling precisely to avoid this sort of problem, and this allows me to use some outdated software that would be unreadable otherwise. I did not find any settings in your programs to adjust this. Did I miss something ?

Updates to fix screen resolution errors using different res. monitors

Congrats for the site, I hadn't heard of it up to now, it looks very interesting and I'll certainly come back  !

[IainB]

I think what is being protested about here - problems experienced with perceiving the small fonts/icons in the windows/panels with SC (Screenshot Captor) and CHS (Clipboard Help & Spell) - is probably addressing what seems to be largely a symptom of the modern "Metro" OS interface.

Speaking as a dedicated user of SC and CHS, and as someone with eyesight problems, I started to experience difficulty in clearly reading post-Windows 7 OS screen displays - the earlier Windows versions were no real problem, but then with the post-Win7 OSes they became too "glary" and lacked clear distinction between objects on-screen, and this and the prettified pastel colour schemes, whilst perhaps being visually attractive, reduced visual object discrimination and made things ergonomically a perceptual PITA.
The rot probably started earlier, with the dumbing-down of things - e.g., MS Office "Ribbon" menus - where one had to have clearly distinguishable icons to memorise the functionality. Whilst that worked reasonably well under the Win7 OS and earlier, the clear distinguishability was reduced in post-Win7, and the smallish icons in SC and CHS were certainly made less easy to discern/distinguish between, though currently the CHS ones seem easier to distinguish to me than the SC ones - and I'm not sure why that is, but it is probably a difference between the way in which objects are output to the display by the two proggies (SC and CHS).
The "Metro" interface was apparently an attempt to make a generic vanilla interface for all devices, and though it might have worked on the little smartphone screens, it seems to be a vague, glary perceptual mess on an LCD laptop display.
 
Having said that, To adjust CHS UI colours and fonts: Go to the Menu View | Options | Custom Appearance where, with some experimentation and trial-and-error, you will be able to set things pretty much to your heart's content (this is what I have found, in any event). Kudos to @mouser for having had the apparent foresight to build-in that functionality - and a lot more besides - to CHS.

As for SC, the option to modify the appearance of the UI simply isn't there to the same extent that it is in CHS. For the SC icons, as a workaround, I just try to memorise the relative on-screen positions of whichever tiny and blurry/glary icons I generally use the most. Spectacles don't help much either.

The biggest problem I have had for a while now with both SC and CHS under the post-Win7 OSes is trying to read the Options screens, which currently have non-adjustable fonts and which have now become relatively tiny in the post-Win7 OSes. The lines making up the characters seem to be just one pixel thick!   

[Clairvaux]

IainB,

Thanks for your detailed point of view. I'm not sure I get it completely, though. I understand your "philosophical" argument about the changing OS aesthetics. However, it seems to me that's a separate issue from the one I raised, which is much more basic.

To put things bluntly, as they appear on my screen, SC (Screenshot Captor) and CHS  (Clipboard Help & Spell) are downright unusable. Windows 7 GUI is perfectly all right for me, and the combination of OS + OS settings works perfectly for me with practically all software I come across.

I recently checked on an old piece of software I used to like very much, it's a project manager called Twiddlebit Plan, which was created for... Psion PDAs, and Nokia phones with a screen, before smartphones were invented. It also had a Windows version. Now that was perfectly usable with Windows ME, and whatever low-res CRT I had at the time, but with modern resolutions, some parts of the UI are too small to read by now (although not all of them).

But this is legacy software. It can't be expected to work nowadays. SC and CHS are current.

So I'm curious to know : do all other users see SC's main window the way I see it ? (Attachment in my former post.) Do they see, as I do, a regular-sized menu line, with File, Edit, Capture, Scan... and below, two checkboxes marked Thumbnail Panel and AutoFit in a much, much smaller font ?

And if yes, is that the expected behaviour of the software, or is it me, i.e. I need to change something in my Windows 7 settings, for instance ?

The File, Edit, Capture... line is perfectly OK. The Thumbnail Panel and AutoFit line (again, as they appear on my screen) kills the software for me.

And I would love to find a workaround, because I was desperate to find something like SC, the guys at Daves Computer Tips pointed it to me, and I can't believe what it can do  ! It seems too good to be true !

[tomos]

Yes, this is a problem, and will become even more of one as monitor resolution increases.

In SC & CHS, there are already problems with system fonts @125% on a FHD 15.6" laptop screen:

• SC has cropped fonts above the image panel, and I have major difficulty reading preferences
• CHS has same or smaller text in options, text in main window (clips, tree) is slightly larger and clearer -- but still not the size it should be with fonts @ 125%

[IainB]

@Clairvaux: In response to what you last commented - I am essentially saying that the visual/perception deficiencies that you experience in common with the OP by @Holisticmdwf are also experienced by me, but that CHS has options to adjust the fonts and colours to the extent that the UI becomes pretty much perfectly usable (try it as I suggested, and you will be able to see for yourself), whereas SC does not have similar UI adjustment options.

To some extent therefore, both SC and CHS could be described as "legacy" software, in that they were not necessarily developed to work under ("support") the current OS and hi-res screen technologies - the latter issue, for example, being as @tomos points out.
It seems that the newer computer technologies have taken us backwards in terms of the ergonomics of visual perception. The manufacturers and OS producers are largely responsible for this, but they seem to have treated it as an externality (i.e., SEP - Somebody Else's Problem). The experience of difficulty in reading some on-screen displays of information today - and which might have been perfectly legible on-screen a few years ago - cannot be simply ascribed to needing reading glasses, or something.
However, it is apparently left up to the developers to rewrite their program code to work around the new constraints, and I guess this will necessitate the commitment of time and effort by the developer(s) involved. In the case of SC and SCH, that would be @mouser, and he probably would be well aware of the problem, since on-screen legibility is certainly not a new issue.

[mouser]

Ok I'm ready to take another run at this stuff.. i'll read everything over and try to come up with some useful to say this weekend.

[freericks]

While not an optimal fix, windows does have a built in magnifier (activates with windows key and plus sign), which can make options readable under magnification and then toggled back to look at full screen again.

[IainB]

^^ Yes, and don't forget zoom levels:

• Ctrl and + (Zoom in).
• Ctrl and -  (Zoom out).
• Press repeatedly to zoom in/out more.
• Ctrl+0 restores zoom level to 100%.

(The latter is not to be confused with Ctrl+"n" where n=1-8 - which are tab numbers in order, Left-to-Right - and wher 9 is the rightmost tab.)

[tomos]

^^ yeah, and the easiest way to activate and use (in win 7 at any rate) is:

• Win and + [plus key]
• Win and - [minus key]

#1 activates it and zooms in, #2 will then also work.

But apart from this workaround, I'm (obviously) still hoping mouser will have another look at font sizes.

[mouser]

I'm (obviously) still hoping mouser will have another look at font sizes.

I promise I am going to try to address the font and button size issue on super high resolution monitors.

[IainB]

Refer also: Re: Improving the ergonomic readability on laptop screen displays - Tips and Tricks.

- uses workaround for CHS as an example.

[izsak]

Sorry guys, this is catastrophic! I got a 4k display on my convertible PC (15.6") and the fonts size and symbols in SC are totally unreadable, even with a physical 3x-5x magnifier. No trick helps.
I assume I'll have to drop SC. What a pity!
Any way, thank you all for the above discussion. Regards

[mouser]

I'm actually currently playing with some options to try to address this..

[IainB]

Good to know that there is some focus being brought to bear on this issue...   

[IainB]

Just for the record, I'm rather pleased with the results of my workaround (above) for CHS. Once it's all been set up, it dispels the CHS ergonomic readability gremlins and makes it great to work with now, though the text on the Options panel remains pretty minuscule, as before, and the column headings on the Grid display seem to be truncated a tad at the bottom edge (which fortunately does not present a major problem anyway).
I suspect that I probably have some of the new settings available in Win10 to thank for this - e.g., like setting the menu text fonts and size. That cuts across the system as a whole and can significantly improve menu ergonomic readability of menus in all applications.

[Clairvaux]

Just checking in to get an update on this thread, after having received your newsletter. Thanks to mouser for agreeing to look into the issue !

[ghaith]

Hi there
i have same problem on windows 10 laptop
the application window is so tiny
I attached an example (in real it is much worse)

please help

thank you

[James Bizzell]

Mouser, do you have any updates for us with high resolution monitors to this issue? There are a lot of us out here with this issue. I would love to be able to see my buttons a bit larger. My high resolution monitor has them so small, I just can't see anything much more than a blur. Impossible to make out what button is what. I love the program and would love to make it my default screen capture program but I can't because it is too difficult to see the buttons. I brought this up in a thread well over a year ago and I keep checking for a program update that fixes this issue, but to no avail.

[nitrix-ud]

Hi James,

you can ask mouser for a beta version which should hopefuly address high dpi issues...
mouser's post