If Win7 textsize = 120%, what Zoom + what "DPI when autogenerated" for 1 to 1 pixels?

Hi

If my Windows textsize DPI is set to 120%, what zoom should I set my Xara (Designer Pro X v8.1)'s Zoom to in order to get 1 pixel on the Xara document to map to 1 pixel on the screen?

e.g. I want see exactly what a web page graphic will look like when exported etc.
Fwiw, I have made my imported bitmaps 1 pixel per pixel setting in Xara; I have set my options to Bitmap = 'never smooth'.
For now my "DPI when autogenerated" is still set at 96DPI (although perhaps I should change this too so that I can simply use the zoom setting to "100%" ??)
All very confusing to my small brain.

Background - the reason why I have increased the Window7 Textsize DPI is because I have a high resolution screen and the text is too small to read. I have changed it to 120% because that is about right (and any larger increase makes various things start to go wrong on (e.g.) web pages and dialogue boxes etc. But I could easily change it to a better number if that helps.

Cheers

J

P.S. Yes, my screen is running at native resolution.

EDIT: Update 83% zoom seems to very nearly do it!

correct - it will be ratio 5:6 [100:120] ie 83.3333333 for as long as you wish to go

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Originally Posted by handrawn

correct - it will be ratio 5:6 [100:120] ie 83.3333333 for as long as you wish to go

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That's a rather painful ratio - is there any other way of doing it?
e.g. At the risk of asking a stupid question, is there any way to getting 100% zoom to show the same size on screen as a website would?
Failing that in how can I get nice round numbers? e.g. I suppose I could go up to 125% DPI, which would mean 80% becomes 1:1 pixel ratio... BUT all the Windows applications (including XARA dialogue boxes, I may say) start to misbehave and text starts becoming invisible (e.g. the colour hex RGB digits are no longer all visible at once I noticed).

What does everyone else do if they are using high res screens ?

J


P.S What is so significant about 96 - why is it always 96DPI?

Hi,
I run windows 7 Premium on a 24" monitor, am 69 yr old and run at 96dpi...
My way of looking at your delemma is ( not to be nasty)..Is you are designing a website for the world to see...not just you if you design for just you to see fine but think of the others you want to see your site..let the site viewers decide what scale to use.
Jim

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All very confusing to my small brain.

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And mine too. I'm with Jim on this one, just keep your dpi to 96 and you'll see what everyone else sees.

You could possibly set up another user on your system and set that to 96dpi as this is user dependant but this seems like a lot of hard work swapping back & forth.

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What is so significant about 96 - why is it always 96DPI?

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It isn't. Apple Macs originally used 72dpi based on the printing industry font size I believe. You'll still see websites recommending you export images at 72 ppi. Windows machines have always been 96 dpi. The whole things a minefield. The latest iphone has 326 pixels per inch display & Samsung are rumoured to be producing an even higher resolution.

I also think it would be best to stick to 96 dpi - having a second monitor at a different size is also a solution if that's an option for you - the maths we have to live with...

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Originally Posted by handrawn

I also think it would be best to stick to 96 dpi - having a second monitor at a different size is also a solution if that's an option for you - the maths we have to live with...

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Not to be sarcastic, but only only have the one screen and I don't have a PC *just* for Xara use!
And no staying at a windows text size of 100% DPI, simply is not an option for me. The text on almost all my windows applications (not just web browsers) is uncomfortably small to read.

But listen up - this isn't must my problem... Frankly anyone using one of the new Windows 8 laptops & tablets that have "1080p" screens that are only 11 to 13inches in size will have even worse problems!

Conclusion:
We need better answers to this problem.

J

ok - but it isn't a xara issue - its a consequence of the way windows is, and the way the hardware is made

as Egg said, if you stick with the standard settings then you will see what your site visitors see [or at least most of them - because there will always be some who have their computers set up differently, and over that you have absolutely no control]

further there is no absolute guarantee that if you design a site at more that 100% font size, you will see what someone viewing at 100% sees, no matter what zoom you adopt

if you stick with 100% font and adjust the resolution of your monitor you should get a better idea - although if it's a flat screen rather than a CRT, that is not an ideal solution either, so two monitors at different resolutions might in that case make it easier to work with, it was only a suggestion...

I have to use reading glasses to view my screen clearly - I am not unsympathetic... ;)

> ok - but it isn't a xara issue - its a consequence of the way windows is, and the way the hardware is made

Not very helpful. To state to obvious, yes Xara does need to work within the constraints of the operating system... and find easy-to-use, ergonomic answers.

On Xara's InfoBar there is dropdown offering zoom levels (amongst others) of: 50%, 75%, 100%, 200%
I have discovered that with my scroll wheel I can zoom in and out to zoom levels of: 50%, 64%, 80%, 100%, 125%, 160%, 200%.

Ah-ha "80%" !
So I have now set my Windows text size to 125% (which I may say *is* one of the pre-set Windows settings)... 100/125 = 80% !
And now with a simple scroll of my scroll wheel I can see my graphics on a WYSIWYG basis.
i.e. 1 pixel on screen = 1 pixel on output image.

Problem solved. (Eventually.)

J

except that you cannot guarantee that what you see will be what your viewer sees at 100% text size - so you will still need to check that out

don't mean to be unhelpful

presumably you have got round this problem too:

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I suppose I could go up to 125% DPI, which would mean 80% becomes 1:1 pixel ratio... BUT all the Windows applications (including XARA dialogue boxes, I may say) start to misbehave....

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well done :)

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Originally Posted by handrawn

except that you cannot guarantee that what you see will be what your viewer sees at 100% text size - so you will still need to check that out

don't mean to be unhelpful

presumably you have got round this problem too:


well done :)

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Okay I think we are conflating different issues here.

My first problem was, given that due to the way the operating system (i.e. all versions of Windows it seems) handles text size, and the resulting fact that I (and an increasingly large number of other users) need to increase our "Textsize DPI" in order to user the operating system comfortably, how can I quickly and easily get my zoom in Xara to show 1 pixel per 1 output pixels when images/graphics are exported? i.e. I simply want to see what is about to be exported on any individual graphic.

To get clear, in my experience all versions of windows do not change the pixels per inch of *graphics* when the user changes the *text* DPI at the o/s level. [And incidentally this does have bizarre implications particularly for Outlook emails because in Outlook (2003/07/10...) depending on how pages are designed using HTML, the width of the page may increase, but the images on the page remain at the same size. To be more, specific it's fine if you use <TABLE WIDTH=XXX >, the table will actually render at XXX pixels width on the users screen, but it goes wrong if you use styles to define width, at which point the tables and all text increase in width, but the images stay at 1 pixel per 1 pixel in the user's screen. And FWIW, unfortunately almost all email agency email building tools use styles!]

For completeness, yes it is possible to change the size that a graphic takes up on a browser screen. This is achieved by the user changing the browser zoom away from 100%.

But an entirely different problem is how do browsers render the space OTHER than actual graphics. As you say this will very much depend on user's settings...

WD9 Premium has an option for Retina resolution support, i.e. 192dpi, double Windows 96dpi. Text and images (provided the images are of sufficient resolution) are published at 192dpi and appear super crisp and sharp on mobile devices that support this resolution.

But as far as I can see, you want to publish for your own benefit since you have no control over how other people are viewing your site. Some people may have huge monitors, others tiny monitors, some mobile devices, some will have made the text larger in their browsers. It is not all equal out there.

Unless I am missing something very obvious here, it appears to me that you are just trying to see how difficult you can make life for yourself. :banghead: ;))

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Originally Posted by gwpriester

WD9 Premium has an option for Retina resolution support, i.e. 192dpi, double Windows 96dpi. Text and images (provided the images are of sufficient resolution) are published at 192dpi and appear super crisp and sharp on mobile devices that support this resolution.

But as far as I can see, you want to publish for your own benefit since you have no control over how other people are viewing your site. Some people may have huge monitors, others tiny monitors, some mobile devices, some will have made the text larger in their browsers. It is not all equal out there.

Unless I am missing something very obvious here, it appears to me that you are just trying to see how difficult you can make life for yourself. :banghead: ;))

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A quick bit of Googling and I still cant quite work out what WD9 Premium is - is it some sort of plugin for Windows?
If so it sounds potentially interesting - particularly when I buy my next laptop/tablet - which will probably be Full HD.

As regard my own publishing, I'm afraid that I have no idea what point you are trying to make. In business obviously one tries to publish with as many different setups in mind as possible and if nothing else a site should wrap as well as possible. Most users will not change their default settings so one designs for that primarily. However higher resolution monitors represent a new type of problem because at their default settings the text is often painfully smell for the majority of users. And with improving tecnology and increasing screen resolutions, this is a problem that is only going to get worse. And more and more these users are being FORCED to change their default text size settings. Unfortunately there do not seem to be any stats available about how many people are doing this in either the O/S or in the browser. In other threads users are talking about Microsoft recommending resetting the text DPI to as high as 200%.

> it appears to me that you are just trying to see how difficult you can make life for yourself.
Then your perception is faulty.

But I have comprehensively solved the problem. The solution is to set my Windows textsize DPI to 125% and to use the scroll wheel to view at 80%, and that way I get to see 1 pixel on screen to 1 pixel on exported image AND my normal text size in all my Windows applications has become comfortable. I confess that the Xara application's dialog boxes do start to not fit the text... but not severely at that %age increase. (Although in future versions of Xara I do strongly suggest that Xara developers code their textsizes differently unless they want to alienate all high res tablet owners!).

Anyhow, job done.

WD9 Premium - Xara Web Designer 9 Premium is the lastest version of Web Designer Premium from Xara
www.xara.com/products/webdesigner

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Originally Posted by PeteS

WD9 Premium - Xara Web Designer 9 Premium is the lastest version of Web Designer Premium from Xara
www.xara.com/products/webdesigner

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OK - thanks

However this is starting to make my head spin:
> Text and images (provided the images are of sufficient resolution) are published at 192dpi
Is he saying that there is a way of creating web pages whereby all browsers render the web pages at 192dpi instead of the usual 96DPI?
I mean is that something you can put into the HTML - i.e. in effect: show this page at half the normal size?

No it means XWD9 creates 2 copies of the same image, 1 at 96dpi for most current displays but also creates a second one at 192dpi for retina (high definition) displays now being produced for iPads and other tablets and smart phones.

From the WD9 Help file

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High resolution images

High resolution images of the kind used by Apple's Retina(R) displays can now be automatically created by Web Designer Premium.

In order to take advantage of Retina type screens it is normally necessary to create all your web photos and graphics at twice the normal resolution of 96 dpi - that is twice as many pixels per inch both vertically and horizontally which is four times as many pixels per square inch. The downside of this is that your files are now up to four times as large, thus dramatically slowing down your website for all your visitors. For those visitors to your website that do not have high-resolution screens this is an unacceptable penalty.

Web Designer Premium solves this problem by both automatically creating the high-resolution photos and web graphics for you and also being smart enough to load the correct resolution graphics for the browser being used.

So this means no speed or download penalty for the non Retina viewers, but for those that do have high-resolution web browsers, they get to see the double resolution imagery, and a much higher quality website.

This high-resolution creation of images is enabled by default - when you export your website a Retina or high resolution viewer will see the larger resolution images and graphics whilst a standard viewer will see images at a normal resolution. The only thing you have to do - is to make sure that the images you want to appear as high-res are saved in your web pages at a higher resolution than 100 dpi. as this is is the cut off point at which Web Designer Premium assumes you want an image to be rendered as high definition. Images at a resolution below 100 dpi remain as standard definition images. You would not normally need to worry about this as with the feature in its default enabled state all images are optimized at 192 dpi in the Optimize Photo dialog and so therefore well above the threshold for the creation of high resolution images.

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Yes, setting Windows Textsize to 125% DPI ("Medium") works perfectly because I can use my scroll-wheel with Control held down to wiz straight to 80% zoom in less than a second. And at 80% I get 1 pixel on screen per pixel in exported graphic.