Shrunken toolbar icons and text

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lank
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Shrunken toolbar icons and text

Post by lank »

I can't say I've noticed this before because I don't use xplorer2 on this computer very much but I see that the toolbar icons and text are shrunken and too narrow.

I'm sure it's a "feature" of this Dell 13 XPS notebook (3200x1800). All display settings are set at default. Almost all the programs on this computer have similar issues. Some text/icons are fine and some are too small. In any event any suggestions how I might be able to fix this issue?

By the way, this cropped screen shot is much larger than I see on my screen but it does show how the text is cut off.
2017-04-27_192428.png
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nikos
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Re: Shrunken toolbar icons and text

Post by nikos »

this is the result of very high DPI. The toolbar labels look unusable, so right click on them and disable the labels. If you need to see the text of the button, use the tooltip (popup)
Kilmatead
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Re: Shrunken toolbar icons and text

Post by Kilmatead »

You may also use Tools -> Advanced Options -> Layout Settings (tab) -> Max Button Width and/or Toolbar Font Size Factor to Normal to adjust the allotted space and fonts to fit toolbar buttons. Also, just right-clicking on a toolbar and disabling the Small Icons checkbox (which defaults to on for some reason) might help.

Using these is preferable to Nikos' odd slash-&-burn suggestion.

Image

* Toolbar Font Size Factor to Normal (when it's away from the office) is just the really hard way of saying "adjust font +/- in relation to DPI" - which, ironically isn't any clearer. Basically, it makes the toolbar font smaller or larger independent of other (Windows) settings you may have set which are otherwise inherited. And Max Button Width allows text to extend beyond the edges of the icon-frames, thus eliminating the "..." bits. (Very useful when giving user-commands long labels.)

More and more LCD screens these days are aiming for higher native-resolutions (for more screen-real-estate); while 3200x1800 is not quite 4K (3840×2160 / 8K == 7680×4320), the downside for users is that everything at standard DPI (96) becomes super-tiny, so many systems/users change the DPI to 120 or even higher... except not all programmes are DPI-aware, and even if they are, they often render things in different ways, which can lead to a whole mess of scaling problems as you've seen. Win10 keeps "promising" better overall adaptation for this, but all evidence has been to the contrary, which is par-for-the-course as far as MS is concerned. :shrug: More drastic solutions involve setting the whole resolution for the machine to a lower setting, which works, but somewhat defeats the purpose of having the higher-tech screens in the first place. That being said, many LCD's are rather cheaply made, and a side effect of being less-expensive is that while claiming higher-resolutions, the actual colour-reproduction and phase-switching capacities at those resolutions is functionally terrible, and useless for professional environs. Welcome to the 21st century. :wink:
Last edited by Kilmatead on 2017 Apr 28, 17:01, edited 2 times in total.
lank
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Re: Shrunken toolbar icons and text

Post by lank »

Thank you Kilmatead. your suggestion helped. By the way, those settings were in Layout Settings and not Global tab on my version.

I did have the use small icons already unchecked and have left it so.

Basically, I only use this computer when I travel and then I use just a few programs and I think every one of them have this kind of issue. Main text is OK but menus, dialog boxes, etc are usually way too small. I've had some high DPI (or I thought they were high at the time) computers but not this high. I think I'd rather suffer with a little less screen space and more normal and usable text sizes. Oh well. This will probably be my last high end notebook anyway.
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Re: Shrunken toolbar icons and text

Post by Kilmatead »

lank wrote: 2017 Apr 28, 15:43...those settings were in Layout Settings and not Global tab on my version.
Oops, sorry about that. (Corrected in original post.) What kind of multi-tab control opens by default to the second page? As usual, I just blame Nikos for all the woes in this life. :D

To be honest, there is zero benefit to making a 13-inch screen with 3200x1800 resolution, and, as you noticed, it's actually detrimental to basic functionality. Essentially, you paid more for a marketing gimmick than any semblance of the true "high end". Shame on Dell.

However, as 3200x1800 is still 16:9 ratio, you could lower the settings in Windows itself to the trusty 16:9 standard of 1920x1080 which would (in my bleary-eyed opinion) still be too high for such a small screen, but it would make all of the text on screen more human-sized, and at least slightly mitigate the stark differences in programme compatibility - and, ultimately, you'd never see any diminished quality anyway, as 1080p is (still) the prize-point for HD. Just a thought. :shrug:
EMathews3
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Re: Shrunken toolbar icons and text

Post by EMathews3 »

A similar problem happens to me after I switch to a different Windows 8 user and then switch back. The icons and text are suddenly too big. Just Exit and restart XP2 and it's fixed.
lank
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Re: Shrunken toolbar icons and text

Post by lank »

Thankfully this isn't my main computer and my regular computer doesn't have these issues.
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