The woes of high DPI (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

I just got finished utterly trashing the beauty of my new laptop.

When I got it yesterday, and first booted it up, I was amazed at how great it was. 1680 x 1050 resolution, gorgeous anti-aliased icons and fonts. I thought it was absolute perfection.

Then, today, I went on the web.

You never realize just how low-res the world wide web is until you surf it on a high-res display. My choice was between distorted resized web images or really really tiny ones. I chose to lower my screen resolution. Then I had to choose between big, beautiful anti-aliased text or the text that fit the websites. I couldn't stand the problems that came with having my text in a format that the sites' designers didn't intend, so I scaled those down as well. And they didn't make it easy, either. I had to lower my screen DPI to 96 dpi (which screwed up alot of other things), change a value in the registry (UseHR), and uncheck a setting in Display > Appearance > Effects. And now the web looks how it should, but the rest of the computer (while looking about the same as my old computer) falls far short of what it did even six hours ago.

My question for others with high-res monitors is whether there's a better solution, or some way to keep the web looking right but making the rest of the computer look as good as it could.

 

[John Chow]

Adam, I'm not sure what options you have in your VGA driver, but on my ATi graphics notebooks, I have an option to increase the DPI setting so that the words are not too small to read. On my 1600x1200 screen I use 120DPI for it. The option on my machine is in the Display Properties-> Settings->Advanced in the General tab, but if you're using a non-ati graphics machine, it may be in a different area.

Since it sounds like you've found the setting already, assuming it's the same thing, try increasing it when at the higher resolutions. I'm really not sure what the other settings you mentioned do.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I get the larger rendered text at 120 DPI. The problem is that I'm a web developer on the side, and the rendered text isn't an accurate protrayal of what the majority of the world sees.

Thanks for the reply, though!

 

[Diallo B]

in my experience for web design you are stuck. but for your own viewing pleasure i would do what was suggested above. that is what i have done on my 1600x1200 laptop and it makes a world of difference.

you can also do two profiles. i have one for web design, photoshop and my own personal computer use. it eliminates always having to change a bunch of settings.

 

[JohanD]

I was doing some research on windows XP and they have a feature to anti-alias text.

Here is the base website:
Microsoft ClearType

Here is the page that will install a component into your browser:
Cleartype Web Installation

I have used it and yes it does make text smoother, especially for LCD/Laptop screens. You can easily disable it, so it is worth a try.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

All of those things were defaulted, and yes they look beautiful, but I can't use them for several of my key online functions.

Diallo: How do you set up two profiles? I think that's what I'm looking for; I can keep the less pretty but more accurate one for web design and the more pretty but less accurate one for everything else.

I really appreciate all the help!