Hello,

I am programming a paradox form, and I want to scale the form in this reasons:

1- When the resolution of the screen is panoramic(wide-screen), I want to
scale the form, and it see good.

2- If I made a zoom of the form, the form appear defformed.

3- If I made a vertical scale, the form appear defformed.

4- If I made a horizontal scale, the form appear defformed.

HOW CAN I THE SCALE, TO SEE WELL????

Simply make it a fixed size for the lowest res it will be used at and
make it look good for that. Then it should look the same (albeit
relatively smaller) on other screen res. If you want to be more complex,
create different forms for different screen res and test the res and
then pick the right form. There is a form sizing demo available on our
paradox resources page. Link in my signature.

Denn Santoro
President
Resource Development Associates
http://www.RDAWorldWide.Com
Offices in the United States and Germany
Providing solutions to health care, business, governments and
non-profits since 1982

Thanks for your response.

But I read your page, and I dont find my solution.
My problem is that.

I have a lot of forms,who have various pages inside them. If I trying to
scale a form, it appears defformed.

If my form it is prepare to a 800x600 screen resolution, if I made a zoom
of this form it appears defformed because it has three or four pages, Or
it is very small, or it is very big, defformed.

How can I resize,scale,made a zoom of a form with, it has a lot of pages??

Thanks.

Set your form to tile pages.

jvqcer wrote:

First, don't zoom the form. Why would you? If itis properly scaled for
800x600 just leave it there. (size the ap window to fit it and maximize
or just explicitly size the window. Don't try and take over the whole
screen regardless of resolution. If you really want to be nasty and take
over the whole screen then make a different copy of the form for each
res you may encounter, test the res on startup and pick that set of
forms. But it is FAR easier to just stick with one size and stay there.

Also, why use pages on the form? Use notebook tabs if you need to
separate data within a single form. Use pop up forms if you just want
another part of your data. Pages are a bad idea generally.

So, in summary, pick a size. Design for it. Forget zoom. It is lousy and
causes problems as you have seen. Get rid of pages. They are a pain. Use
notebooks or pop up forms. Don't resize. Don't change scale. Size the ap
explicitly and maximize your forms or size the forms explicitly. If you
want you can also disable resizing of the ap window or the form itslef
but that is more complicated. Usually easier just to tell users to leave
the forms the size they come up or deal with the lousy look. They will
stop changing sizes.

Denn Santoro
President
Resource Development Associates
http://www.RDAWorldWide.Com
Offices in the United States and Germany
Providing solutions to health care, business, governments and
non-profits since 1982

Amen. To see that this is the standard way Windows works, do this:

1. Open the display properties window (right click on blank area of
Windows desktop, choose Properties). Go to the Settings tab. Make note
of the resolution.

2. Note how much space on the screen the dialog occupies.

3. Now change the resolution to something lower than it currently is and
apply (Do NOT close the dialog).

4. Note how much space on the screen the dialog occupies - it occupies
more space.

5. Now change the resolution to something higher than it originally was
and apply (again, do NOT close the dialog).

6. Note how much space on the screen the dialog occupies - it occupies
less space.

7. Repeat for each resolution.

The dialog does NOT change size. It *looks* bigger or smaller based on
the resolution.

If your form is designed to take the whole screen at 800x600, leave it
that way. When I run your form at 1920x1280, it will take up a small
portion of my screen (800x600 pixels, to be exact) and that is exactly
what I want.

Liz


Dennis Santoro wrote:

Hi Dennis,

I've seen this said before, both from you and I think a few others. What is
the reasoning for this? I use pages all the time in my apps, and am tending
to use them more rather than less as time goes on. I also use tabbed
dialogues where appropriate but not to navigate the entire app. I feel
pages have multiple advantages over tabbed dialogues for the main part of an
app, including only showing things you want that user to see, plus I think
they give a much cleaner look than using a tabbed dialogue for the main part
of the app.

I am also trying my best to get away from pop up forms as much as possible.
I've grown to really dislike apps where everything you do spawns yet another
pop up. It makes for a very confusing interface, in my opinion.

The current app I'm working on uses pages and also fields, tableframes, etc.
that become hidden or visible based on what the user is doing. It seems to
make for a much easier, simpler and more intuitive (there's that word again)
interface for the end user.

Is there any particular reason you don't like pages or is it just personal
preference. Thanks.

Regards,
RoyF

"Dennis Santoro" <RDAPres (AT) NoRDASpamWorldWide (DOT) com> wrote

Hi Roy,

I don't like them mostly because they tend to cause containership issues
unless you are careful or add multiple instances of the tables to the
form. If I need a page I would rather just pull a complete new form. It
also simplifies the form, the code and debugging. It helps for support
("what form title do you see?" OK, I know what you are looking at.) I
don't need any page navigation code. I don't have a whole lot of extra
stuff bubbling to the form. Even when I did use pages (pre notebooks) I
would stack them so you couldn't scroll from one to another, you could
only see one at a time, not half of 2.

I disagree about pop up forms causing confusion. When I pop up a form
either you are in a dialog and have to deal with it or you are in
another form that fills the pdox desktop and the form you cam from is
hidden (really hidden, not just covered) until you are done. So
navigation is quite simple. Not like what you describe. Even if one form
pops up another and that form pops up another there is no confusion in
my aps. You are dealing with the one you are in and can't co back until
you finish. And you will never see more than one full form and one
dialog or, at most one full form and 2 dialogs so if you find that
confusing time to go back to a pen and pad.

I also think folks are very used to the tabbed approach so it is simple
and easy for users to understand and maximizes screen real estate. I do
sometimes hide and show uios based on what the user is doing, the data
displayed, etc. That can make sure life simpler.

Denn Santoro
President
Resource Development Associates
http://www.RDAWorldWide.Com
Offices in the United States and Germany
Providing solutions to health care, business, governments and
non-profits since 1982

Hi Dennis,

Yeah, I do have to have multiple instances of the same tables in the forms
datamodel.

True also. My forms with pages are much more complex with a lot more going
on on each form. Even though it makes it more complex for me, I like it
because it makes things simpler for the user.

Agree completely and I think this is very importanct. The pages have to be
tiled or you can get some wierd looking results.

The way you do it certainly sounds better, but I still like having UI
objects go visible or invisible based on user intereraction. I think this
type of context sensitivity goes a long way to making things easier for the
user.

You just described most of my users to a tee.

Thanks for the input. It seems that it is more of personal preference thing
than any hidden traps, which is what I wanted to make sure of.

Regards,
RoyF

"Dennis Santoro" <RDAPres (AT) NoRDASpamWorldWide (DOT) com> wrote

Hmm, Our state medical system uses software that spawns numerous pop
up windows and it is very messy. It amazes me that professionals
design such user unfriendly software. As a semi-amateur, it is
something I avoid, and people who use my software find it reasonably
straight forward... PW