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One of the things that aggravate me about Windows DPI scaling is that it doesn't truly stretch out the whole desktop 1:1. Below are visual examples of what I mean.

100% Scaling

200% Scaling

The top image is Windows at 100% DPI scaling, and the bottom image uses 200% scaling. Notice how in 200% scaling, the taskbar icons and ribbon tabs are more squished in together, and the close window x looks smaller.

But I don't get why this happens. Why doesn't Windows simply pixel double the 100% DPI interface to make the 200% interface? Why does it end up looking scrunched up instead? Is there a way I can make the 200% DPI setting truly replicate the alignment of 100% scaling?

Thanks for your help.

1 Answer 1

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Here's one way to (almost) replicate the alignment. Set your screen resolution to lower than its native resolution, and set the GPU to stretch the image. But you'll get blurry texts and blurry edges everywhere. That's because when you just enlarge everything that drawn, you need an algorithm to fill the blanks you just created, it would be like upsizing a small SD video into full HD. Also you'll notice since the resolution is lower, you'll lose space (toolbars would be cut off, or resizing themselves in the case of Office Ribbon), so you won't get the exact alignment anyway.

DPI scaling is not just a simplistic resize everything. The app itself must be aware of the scaling and react accordingly (adjusting the graphics drawn, font sizes). The problem was most programmers ignore the checklist (since you would effectively need to re-test your text layout and regenerate different bitmap graphics, which is painful if it's not rendered from a master vector graphics).

The taskbar icons and Ribbon tabs are squished since Windows Taskbar & Office is aware of the DPI change and react accordingly, while the close button graphic looks smaller because the windowing system, while aware of the DPI change (hence the bigger box) doesn't have the appropriate larger graphic to render inside the box.

This was one of the touted benefit of Metro interface, since most of the fault is in the WinForm rendering system, where WinForm is "pixel-first", every layout aspect is declared in pixel or simplistic anchoring, while Metro UI are designed with relative layout which would nicely re-flow on different resolution and DPI without breaking everything.

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