Where I work at our workstations use a standard graphics setting. Recently, after I developed an app my team decided to demo it to the managers. Andimmediately ran into a glitch. The managers use laptops, not workstations, and the laptops use a lower resolution.

This ended up with forms that no longer fit in the screen. The demo started off with a fail. We had to use a user's workstation to continue.

I would think that in 15+ years of creating Access MS could have come up with a method to determine the graphic settings of a developed app and upon opening up the app resize the forms automatically.

What would be your solution to correct my problem? Should I poll the managers and see what is the lowest settings for their laptops and then develop 2 applications; 1 for workstations and another for laptops? It'd be nice if there was an easy graphics setting toggle in Access if that's the case.

I'm looking forward to developing apps for the new Surface tablet. I wonder if it has multiple graphics settings. If so, Access developers will be relagated to a low resolution or be forced to change resolutions between development and our other tasks. Of course it will add additional work/time for us, but we don't mind having MS's coders save time at our expense.

Per Patrick Finucane:
It's there, but not automagic.

There is an API call that will tell your code what the rez is
and, of course, Access VBA has a command for sizing a window.

Greater Minds Than Mine will probably chime in with the specifics

I develop for small groups, so it's no problem to just check each
person's machine to see what rez they are using.

Personally, I would shy away from using the whole screen.


Maybe somebody's written a library or something that can do this
- but you would still have to drive it with sizing parameters
that you come up with.

The VBA and API call thing is pretty straightforward because even
I can do it... Once you retrieve the user's screen rez, it's just
a matter of Form_Open() coding.

But I've never done that.

Instead, for every form, I save the form's size and location at
the time it was closed (in the app's .INI file on the LAN server,
under the user's WindowsID) and restore same when the form is
opened next time.

That way, things tend to come up the way the user left them last
time, which I'm guessing is mostly the way they wanted it.

Only loose end there is to decide how much rez you want to cater
to for a form that wants a lot of real estate to show everything
without scrolling.
--
Pete Cresswell

Patrick Finucane wrote:
There have been various re-sizers over the years, I don't know if the
current ones are any good. There is a logical problem with thinking this
could be automatic and good design. Each control takes up some number of
pixels so the number you fit on the screen depends on resolution. Sure you
can re-size them to some extent but it takes some judgment to maintain
readability, spacing and good flow and if you have designed for hi-res and
have to scrunch it down it still may not fit. Look at how well the auto
forms work out of the box. Is there any application development software
that does this well automatically? I think you are asking too much.

I would build one version to fit the lowest screen res. There is an
argument that there is an upper limit to how much detail you should present
at any one time so having some unused real estate on hi-res screens is the
lesser evil. Tell the hi-res users it's so they can show Word at the same
time :-)


David

In addition to the good advice you've already received, take a look at
StretcherShrinker, from Peter's Software
http://www.peterssoftware.com/ss.htm

(I have no affiliation with them...)

"Patrick Finucane" wrote in message
news:3d085530-c000-49f5-8f59-9404db6546f2 (AT) googlegroups (DOT) com...

Where I work at our workstations use a standard graphics setting. Recently,
after I developed an app my team decided to demo it to the managers. And
immediately ran into a glitch. The managers use laptops, not workstations,
and the laptops use a lower resolution.

This ended up with forms that no longer fit in the screen. The demo started
off with a fail. We had to use a user's workstation to continue.

I would think that in 15+ years of creating Access MS could have come up
with a method to determine the graphic settings of a developed app and upon
opening up the app resize the forms automatically.

What would be your solution to correct my problem? Should I poll the
managers and see what is the lowest settings for their laptops and then
develop 2 applications; 1 for workstations and another for laptops? It'd be
nice if there was an easy graphics setting toggle in Access if that's the
case.

I'm looking forward to developing apps for the new Surface tablet. I wonder
if it has multiple graphics settings. If so, Access developers will be
relagated to a low resolution or be forced to change resolutions between
development and our other tasks. Of course it will add additional work/time
for us, but we don't mind having MS's coders save time at our expense.

On 19/08/2012 13:27:50, "Douglas J Steele" wrote:
I Use Peter's ShrinkerStretcher and find it very good.
One Caveat though. If yo upen a form with shrinker stretcher enabled,
chande to design view and change something, go back to form view, when you
close it it will save the form, The form may get saved in it's shrunken or
stretched shape. This means that all you're careful aligning & sizing
controls goes to pot. I tend to Hide the standard close button on a form and
use a Command button that fires DoCmd.Close , , acSaveNo.
Phil

Hi,
there are a lot of resizers available.
Not all are always doing what they should do.
The best I found was this:

http://www.peterssoftware.com/ss.htm

rgrds
Juergen