If you increase your DPI setting in Windows 7 (or Vista), you may notice your application doesn’t look the way you intended.
What’s the Big Deal?You may say, “Nobody changes the default DPI, right?” Well, Windows 7 might. Windows 7 may increase the default DPI setting based on the resolution the video card supports. The default DPI decision occurs when you do a clean install. Over time as people buy newer machines supporting higher resolution, you will see a trend of users running at a higher DPI.
Why is Making Your Application DPI Aware Important?As display resolution increases, stuff on the screen gets smaller. When the text is too small to read, people tend to reduce the resolution. By reducing the resolution, you are relying on the monitor to do the scaling and the desktop can looked stretched or blurry. Also, ClearType will only work at native (recommended) resolution. So, how do you get all the readability benefits of font smoothing and still have bigger text? You increase the DPI.
Can this Affect my Application?In most cases, applications are designed for the default of 96 DPI. As you increase the DPI, your application appears to get smaller. If you application doesn’t declare that it is high DPI aware, at high DPI settings, Windows 7 Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) scale it to make it look bigger at a DPI setting of 144 DPI (150%) or greater.
Blurry UI (Pixilation)Blurry UI occurs when DWM scales an application window. Here’s an example of an application designed for 96 DPI and doesn’t declare DPI awareness. This is what the application looks like with a setting of 144 DPI (150%). Notice the text in the title bar is clear but the text in the application is blurry. Read more: Pat's Application Compatibility Blog
What’s the Big Deal?You may say, “Nobody changes the default DPI, right?” Well, Windows 7 might. Windows 7 may increase the default DPI setting based on the resolution the video card supports. The default DPI decision occurs when you do a clean install. Over time as people buy newer machines supporting higher resolution, you will see a trend of users running at a higher DPI.
Why is Making Your Application DPI Aware Important?As display resolution increases, stuff on the screen gets smaller. When the text is too small to read, people tend to reduce the resolution. By reducing the resolution, you are relying on the monitor to do the scaling and the desktop can looked stretched or blurry. Also, ClearType will only work at native (recommended) resolution. So, how do you get all the readability benefits of font smoothing and still have bigger text? You increase the DPI.
Can this Affect my Application?In most cases, applications are designed for the default of 96 DPI. As you increase the DPI, your application appears to get smaller. If you application doesn’t declare that it is high DPI aware, at high DPI settings, Windows 7 Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) scale it to make it look bigger at a DPI setting of 144 DPI (150%) or greater.
Blurry UI (Pixilation)Blurry UI occurs when DWM scales an application window. Here’s an example of an application designed for 96 DPI and doesn’t declare DPI awareness. This is what the application looks like with a setting of 144 DPI (150%). Notice the text in the title bar is clear but the text in the application is blurry. Read more: Pat's Application Compatibility Blog
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