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From: VanguardLH on 15 Mar 2010 00:09 Bear Bottoms wrote: > VanguardLH <V(a)nguard.LH> wrote in news:hnjn6n$3t6$1(a)news.albasani.net: > >> There are freeware QoS utilities that can throttle bandwidth for a >> SPECIFIC process rather than all of them? > > Here is one that works well: (there are others) > http://seriousbit.com/netbalancer/ > The Free version is limited to 5 process priorities/limits at a time Thanks. That gives me some features and search criteria on which to search for similar utilities. I saved a shortcut to the site to look at it later. > If you used the settings designed for the program which is the default on > most computers, you would see them. That is my point. Increasing your DPI > can cause many issues with many programs. And designing a UI to compensate for changes in font size and scaling should always be a consideration in UI design. That was my point. Themes have been available for Windows for very long time, and they can change font size. Customizing object sizes in Windows (Display applet -> Appearance -> Advanced) has been around how long in Windows? I think that was available back in Windows 3.1. So anyone designing a UI that doesn't take in account how users *do* tweak their Windows are shortsighted since those same programmers know full well the configurability of Windows. After all, they are Windows users, too. They're not programming in a vacuum. In fact, after the initial shock of getting a new OS, it seems the first things users start putzing around with are themes, font size, colors, layout, etc. They love to customize. >> You keep talking about screen resolution. The bug that I reported has >> to do with DPI (dots per inch) for font scaling. I'm not talking >> about changing from 1600x800 to 1024x768 or other screen resolutions. >> To see what I'm talking about, go to: > > I checked both, screen resolution as in real estate and screen resolution > as in DPI...who is confused now. Readers can only go by why you say, not by what you meant to say. Before you only said you tried different screen resolutions and no mention of DPI. Now you mention DPI. > From Microsoft: > "The typical resolution on most computer monitors is 96 dots-per-inch > (DPI). Until recently, most computer hardware was not able to produce > higher resolution, but this is changing. Several hardware manufacturers > (especially manufacturers of laptop computers) are building computers that > have higher resolution screens." A reference would be appreciated. Was this the article to which you refer? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820286 (you only get to see the review date, not the original date) And on the flip side, I have seen GUIs written that do account for DPI setting and/or large/small font themes (if they try to match the currently selected Windows theme). Making an application resolution-aware, color- depth aware, and DPI-aware isn't new. Also, those must be some awfully cheap LCD monitors that Microsoft considers typical since I've been changing the DPI setting from the first day I got my first LCD monitor some 8 years ago. In fact, trying to up the size of text by increasing the DPI setting usually incurs far less, if any, artificats (in the display, not in the layout of apps designed by programmers) then by changing away from the native resolution of the LCD monitor. Sorry, but having to switch back to 96 DPI is not an option. I'm not squinting and getting headaches because of lack of checking the boundary of objects within a frame do not exceed the window dimensions. So this product is usable by those comfortable with the defaults but not the rest of us that want or need to tweak the DPI. As a test, I switched from 120 DPI back to the default of 96 DPI. YIKES!!! No way, no how, nada, nope, ain't gonna happen. Even if I move close up to the monitor, the tiny text is just too small. It's sharp but it's tiny. If LCDs were like CRTs, I would've simply have used a lower screen resolution. Alas, we're stuck with LCDs operating best at the native/manufactured resolution. I actually did start looking around for a replacement CRT when my broke but there were so few offerings in my size and they had gone astronomical in price due to lack of availability since they aren't manufactured anymore. Yes, I'll grant that the author wrote the product under the default 96 DPI setting. The natural inclination would be to start coding using what you see on your host; however, the expectation when distributing that software to others is that you then change resolutions, color depths, DPI scaling, compare LCD versus CRT, especially in regards to gamma and effects on viewing angle, and probably lots more attributes to ensure your target audience can use your product. I'll also grant that the author never considered users that change the DPI setting (and can so without all those problems mentioned in that Microsoft KB article). Even if the programmer doesn't want to figure out dynamic layout of his GUI, just adding the context menu would work to solve an program that is not DPI-aware. DPI as used by Microsoft isn't about increasing the resolution (density) of an object. The scaled 10pt font still gets handled as if it were 10pt but it gets scaled to the equivalent of 12pt. With Windows, increased resolution results in smaller-sized objects (because the pixel size of the objects hasn't changed but the pixels/inch has). DPI is scaling. It will, as you have noted, cause problems in applications that don't consider that users may either change the font size or do the equivalent through scaling. If a character gets larger in size, how has its resolution gone up? It didn't. At the same resolution, more pixels were used to scale up the font. Yes, more pixels were involved in painting that character but the character also increased in size so the resolution (its density) did not change. http://blogs.msdn.com/fontblog/archive/2005/11/08/490490.aspx Even Microsoft recognized that the best reading size was not 100% but instead 125%. Did you ever notice the default zoom in IE8 is 125%, not 100%? That was deliberate because Microsoft researched that users would complain when reading web pages at native resolutions with zero magnification (scaling). That means, by default, web pages are scaled up 125% which would affect the layout of objects in a web page. Drawing with more pixels but scaling up the size does not change resolution (density). Since you like quoting Microsoft, here's an article for you: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc849094(VS.85).aspx "You can see that in Figure 1 [at 125% scaling], the width of the Web page is about the same as that of the display; the Web page is thus much easier to read than it is in Figure 2 [at 100% or no scaling]." "many users lower the display resolution ... the content does look larger as a result, it also looks less sharp." Microsoft gets halfway to a correct meaning of the term by calling it "DPI Scaling" (i.e., it's scaling or zooming). And here's an important one but seems any UI programmer should know: "It is important to note that third-party Windows applications are responsible for being DPI-aware on their own." Programmers aren't coding in a cave. They talk to each other all the time and it isn't some new fangled technology involved in making apps DPI-aware: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/ITCG/thread/ac3b41b8-b563-4c8e-b50a-39952c442254 There are APIs that the programmer can use to discover the DPI setting, just like to find out the screen resolution, color depth, and so on. I actually suspect that this has been problematic for so long that I'll venture there already exist pre-compiled libraries that programmers can use to dynamically manage the layout of the GUI dependent on the video attributes used on the end-user's host. > Maybe reading glasses will help? I finally succumbed to them :) Yeah, I had considered those. I might go that way someday when tweaking the video output won't do anymore. I've got more buddies aging along with me that are starting to wear them. One got lasik surgery so he doesn't need to wear glasses for normal activities but now he has to don a pair of reader spectacles when he sits at the computer. In the past, I couldn't wear eyeglasses for more than an hour or two before I started feeling the tension of an oncoming headache. Guess it's time to start watching for specials on reader specs. I've put it off but eventually I might have to go that way. Of course, Windows has always come with Accessibility features but I haven't had to go to those extremes and have been satisfied with just changing the DPI scaling, so far. Since you mentioned a bandwidth managment utility that can throttle on a particular application, I'm starting to wonder if there is a utility that can emulate the effect of different DPI just for a particular app. I'll put that on my to-do list. Then, for example, I could leave DPI at 120 but make it look like 96 for this program. It would be a descaling utility that operated within the bounds of an app's window. Interesting idea. >> Many applications will still paint their UI correctly with an >> increased DPI. > > Many programs don't. Which means some understand the tweaking parameters available in Windows that have been there for over a decade and some don't, or don't care, or simply neglected that aspect. Many times all it takes is a comment to get the programmer to notice the problem. Acquiescing never gets you noticed. As you can see, neither of us are wallflowers. >> How did viewing the downloaded video get into this discussion? I >> never went off on a tangent regarding the playback of the movie which >> is completely outside the function of StreamTransport. > > "If you set the DPI higher than 96, the text and other items on the screen > might appear blurry in some programs that are not designed for high�DPI > display." I have yet to see any video quality problems in playing back videos while DPI scaling had been changed from 96 to 120. Guess over the years that I haven't been unlucky in owning one of those "typical" monitors mentioned by Microsoft. > Very many programs phone home. Very few quality programs do so maliciously. > This is a quality program. The packets are simple protocol calls. Look at > them yourself...it is easy to do. I actually didn't expect this phoning home behavior as being malicious - unless you count loss of privacy as malicious.
From: VanguardLH on 15 Mar 2010 01:19 Bear Bottoms wrote: > VanguardLH <V(a)nguard.LH> wrote in news:hnjn6n$3t6$1(a)news.albasani.net: > >> While >> I might spend more time on testing one program in which I'm >> interested, you might not have that luxury with all the software that >> you go through. >> > > Ok, I think we are done here right! Yeah, I think we've hashed out our opinions and experiences more than enough. The conversations gave me some things to further investigate and also consider requesting as feature enhancement to the author in their forums.
From: VanguardLH on 15 Mar 2010 02:22 Bear Bottoms wrote: > > From Microsoft: > "A user interface that was designed to look good on a 96-DPI monitor may > not look as good at higher resolutions. ..." While trying to find a utility that could adjust the effective DPI within an app's window (i.e., make fonts smaller to counter an increased DPI value), I came across the following Microsoft that now recommends going to 144 DPI in Windows 7, and which is even higher than I have now have at 120: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd464659(VS.85).aspx Alas, DPI virtualization isn't something we folks back on Windows XP can take advantage of to compensate for non-DPI aware applications. Just goes to show that nothing is static. With the ever increasing screen resolutions making objects ever smaller, a larger DPI *scaling* is needed to make those objects larger (which does not change their resolution) so they remain legible to human eyes which haven't changed in general. My LCD monitor has a max and native resolution of 1650x1050. I see LCD monitors are now up to 1920x1200. LCD monitors keep going up and up in their native resolution. Objects defined with the same number of pixels keep going down and down in size. DPI scaling becomes more important to compensate for technology that outstrips our optical abilities.
From: Zaphod on 15 Mar 2010 05:18 On Mar 14, 9:46 am, za kAT <za...(a)super-secret-IPaddress.invalid> wrote: > On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:43:22 +0000, Dave wrote: > > On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:16:36 +0000, Bear Bottoms wrote: > > >> StreamTransport is a program that can download encrypted video from > >> Hulu. I have tested this .... > > > <snip paraphrasing of article at Freeware Genius > > >>http://www.streamtransport.com/ > > >http://www.freewaregenius.com/ for the article from the person who > > actually tested the software and wrote the piece. > > > Original: > > "it is quite possible that the Hulu encryption might be tweaked or > > changed at some point and would require StreamTransport to be updated to > > keep pace, but at least at the time of this writing it is working." > > > BBBullshit: > > When Hulu changes/tweaks their encryption, this program will have to keep > > up to continue being able to download the flv. For now, it works. > > > ...pathetic.. > > > Dave > > Another poster who denigrates Bear Bottoms, I bet a pint that you > believe he ran drugs too. > > ...pathetic... > > Pooh says you stink. > -- > za...(a)pooh.the.cat -www.zakATsKopterChat.com I believe, I'm a believer (and BB is a woeful thing!)
From: Bear Bottoms on 15 Mar 2010 15:18
On Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:19:32 -0700, Craig <netburgher(a)REMOVEgmail.com> said: > certainly sounds fishy and I wouldn't promote it. I reserve the right to copy any material I have legal access to on my computer. I will respect distribution rights however. -- BearBottoms |