Database Users

Is it just me or is real VGA more trouble than it's worth?

Like a lot of people here I had been waiting rather impatiently for the real VGA hack for my Jasjar. Now that it's here and I've been using it for a week or so, I'm definitely beginning to see why MS didn't make this an option from the beginning, and I'm also beginning to wonder how much it's really worth.
Real VGA has two big benefits for me... it allows me to shrink the size of the bars on the top and bottom of the screen so I get more usable screen space, and it allows Pocket IE to run without it's stupid pixel doubling 'feature'... that's a big one for me.
Unfortunately it's got a lot of disadvangages too... it makes the bars on the top and bottom of the screen so small that they're difficult to use normally, and all but impossible to use while driving. Like I said above, making them smaller would be an advantage, but it's simply way too small. A lot of applications don't work well in real VGA mode... including the phone dialer, the calculator and others. The font size can't be changed for a lot of things... the start bar, the caller ID info screen, and others. This makes a lot of the information displayed quite difficult to read... again, especially while in a car.
As I've been thinking about it more and more, I realized that the only thing that I really need is for PocketIE to work without pixel doubling... then I'd be quite happy in non-VGA mode. While I doubt that will ever happen hopefully we'll get some third party browsers that will work nicely in non-VGA mode. Until then I think I'm going to be using non-vga most of the time and I'll just switch to VGA mode when I need to do a lot of browsing.
Anyone have any other thoughts on this?
Brett

I think that makes sense. We need dynamically switching VGA really. For day to day use, the thumb is just too fat for VGA. It's barely ok to use for QVGA driving/walking etc.
But for browsing, VGA is great. But it's too much and too tiring all the time I think.
V

yea...we need a button like the screen rotate button that lets us change the res whenever we want

I think I would also agree. There are only two advantages to using the o2vga fix. 1) The only app that it improves is the browser, But as Brett stated, in the car it is too small. It works well for some sites very well and others it is too small. 2) the best advantage is that after I applied o2vga, ms voice command now shows the contact info when i say show "contact".
I also am beta testing the wm5 thunderhawk browser. It allows 640 x 480 and 800 x 600, and 640 x 320(?). The font that is used in thunderhawk is hard to read and the app is very slow. Due to the slow speed and font, I'm not sure the thunderhawk browser on wm5 universal is worth it. ALL in all, the original IE browser with zoom to small or medium seem to look the best.

Brett: Couldn't agree more. It was great to see what the device can do, and how the screen really is, tiny! But in truth, the eyestrain was no joke, and finger operation became impossible. I did a lot of toggling between the two, and ultimately decided that what I was is the standard resolution, but with some hacks for:
- Smaller scroll bars (VJ mentions this somewhere)
- Shrunk edge bits in XL
- Smaller edges for Terminal Services (altho central area surprisingly gives same res)
- and of course a hack for PIE.
Now, surely the latter is manageable? It's simply how IE is rendering. Perhaps MS will fix this soon, or maybe someone can intercept the rendering engine. I even don't care if my images lose every second pixel in order to come to the right size at half the res.

Real time Resolution Switching
See the attached link to a bit of software, which once released for WM5 may solve the VGA issue. It allows switching between resolutions on the fly.
I tried it on my Blue Angel, and it worked great, albeit a little unstable.
Note the site says they've been working on WM5 compatibility since Feb, so this may be wishful thinking.
http://www.nyditot.com/Products.asp

It's certainly not ideal, but besides web browsing I would add that word processing is nicer in VGA. Fortunately I don't have to do that much, but when I did need to for a meeting, I appreciated the VGA. With the keyboard and VGA, the term Pocket PC is more than just wishful thinking.

It's certainly not ideal, but besides web browsing I would add that word processing is nicer in VGA. Fortunately I don't have to do that much, but when I did need to for a meeting, I appreciated the VGA. With the keyboard and VGA, the term Pocket PC is more than just wishful thinking.

I agree it is to much hassle to work smoothly in everyday conditions, personally I think its down to programmers to make font options more accessable, take the new version of pocket breeze, in qvga or vga it stays the same size on screen, and gives the user total control over all font sizes.
This is the sort of programming we need to utilise such a great display!!!

lol
kinda bull---- lol
i remember when whe had 640 resolution on the pc.. everyone hated it when we started to use 800 res.. and lets not speak about 1024 haha..
i see loads of people using 1600 res nowedays.. higher res means better image quality!!
It also means better games better everything. So 640 res on the exec is SUPER, we only need adjust (like the pc) font size and get larger better resolution icons for those people who like to nagg (just like on real pc's)
VGA resolution is the future, and i am sure we get 800 res soon also and maybe even higher.. better looking programs etc etc..
and if your fingers are to thick for dialpad then you must have problems with any normal gsm LMAO
Just get a skin where the ok button close button are larger and nicer..
but that is just my penny worth :twisted:

Forcing VGA to QVGA

I'm developing an application and currently have a Universal which has a VGA resolution.
I'm wanting to test it on non-VGA screens and was wondering if there was a hack, utility or way of forcing the screen to go down to QVGA?
Anyone know if this can be done?

dont the emulator support whatever res you set ?

The emulator does yes, but I'm now wanting to test on an actual device.
The AutoScale properties I don't 100% trust (past experience).
I'm surprised there's no library call to change the resolution, or if there is, I can't seem to see one anywhere.

How to change the screen resolution ?

well.. this is the question.. my resolution is 480x234. somebody know how to change it for a 800x400 res? i seen many videos of youtube with this resolution and compared with my 480x234 is a BIG difference in quality...i think , and im sure its possible.. ,
i seen in the internet a page (search in google for wincepatch) , the patch on this page changes the resolution driver for a 800x480 driver on ANY wince 5/6 device , the main problem with the patch is for the $ , the patch is not for free.....
the main "video driver" , calls a value on a registry key ([HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\GDI\Drivers]) ,there is a key called "maindisp" , here , it calls a ".dll" file , THIS dll file tells the resolution and other things... the question is , how i build a ddi.dll file with 800x480 resolution? , sory for the bad english , im argentinian.. good bye !

ok , y advanced some , searching all the internet and is no way to get a "ddi.dll" disp driver from the internet... ,
i think its possible to upload mi ddi.dll with the 480x234 resolution, with yours help, modify it with a hex editor to a 800x480 resolution.. what do you think?

Someone can correct me if I am wrong but I don't believe what you are asking is possible. The screen on your phone can only display 480*234 because the screen itself only has the hardware capabilities to display that resolution (or possibly lower). It's like taking an old CRT tube tv, and then trying to play a 1080p video on it. The TV simply does not have the hardware technology to display the 1920x1080 picture, but rather can only display a resolution of 640x480. I believe it is that same case for your phone, your simply can't make the screen hardware display something it is incapable of. Again though I may be incorrect and anyone with more knowledge on this is subject would be appreciated to comment.

zoomonkey90 said:
Someone can correct me if I am wrong but I don't believe what you are asking is possible. The screen on your phone can only display 480*234 because the screen itself only has the hardware capabilities to display that resolution (or possibly lower). It's like taking an old CRT tube tv, and then trying to play a 1080p video on it. The TV simply does not have the hardware technology to display the 1920x1080 picture, but rather can only display a resolution of 640x480. I believe it is that same case for your phone, your simply can't make the screen hardware display something it is incapable of. Again though I may be incorrect and anyone with more knowledge on this is subject would be appreciated to comment.
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sure! , you are correct. sory for my bad english , here is my question :
>The screen in windows is set to 320x240 and it stretches on the 480x234 display...
Finding the way to change resolution in core would allow to set a better solution (perhaps 400 or so pixels) and could solve both problems (display not sync or looking bad in my case).
According to http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=379728 there's a way to change the resolution. Perhaps there's a way in win core too.
Ideas?

lukz93 said:
According to http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=379728 there's a way to change the resolution. Perhaps there's a way in win core too.
Ideas?
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Click to collapse
Windows CE based devices are designed to support only a single video mode. For example, the Medion PNA I own has a display which is 480 pixel wide and 272 pixels high. Whatever the size, this is the physical resolution of the device. It is generally determined by the actual number of individual pixels elements that make up the display hardware and video chip that control the display. YOU CAN'T CHANGE THIS PER SOFTWARE!
BTW: Why not simply try out Nyditot Virtual Display ("NVD") you pointed to, which is trial ware, means you can testwisely install and use it for 7 days? Be aware, not all software applications written for the various Windows CE platforms are “resolution aware”. That is, they assume a standard resolution (e.g. 240x320 on Pocket PC) and therefore do not alter their layout based on NVD’s virtual width and height settings. NVD can't control the behavior of these applications! Even the Windows CE desktop (explorer) can't be changed with NVD.

reading , again reading and acquiring knowledge i learn this :
-The screen in windows is set to 320x240 and it stretches on the 480x234 display...
now , i take apart the resolution-change proble, and go for the new problem jaja, im stucked in sysupdater .. the problem? the touch screen doesn't work , and i can't press any button on this window...i'm thinking the unique solution is weld the usb port for the wince board , exactly as petrutms explained... , with that port attach a keyboard and w/ the tab key move between fields...

First of all you must say which device you have.
If your device has a 320x240 display, or a 400x320 or a 600x400, etc., you'll not be able to change it to a bigger size. You're limited by drivers, yes, but also by phisycal parameters. In other words, if you are capable to build a device using the screen of the HD2 and putting it in a Herald, and get it to work, probably you'll be capable to change or create the drivers.
On the other side, I've been using some 400x320 apps into my 320x240 display, and this means some parts of the app image (when it runs and does not crash because of display resolution) remain "out" of the screen and I can't scroll them. If this is what you mean when writing about those drivers...
And by opposite, apps made for smaller screens appear as a small part rendered in a black screen. Then, probably they can be stretched using some sort of apps or drivers, but this means you'll see blurred images, as they are zoomed like when you're displaying images 200% in your photoshop.

there is a program to change the resoloution.
not sure if it will work for what you need it to do but if i can find it ill upload it for you to try.

[Q] Enabling Snap on Low(ish)-Resolution Desktops

Hi,
Is there anyway to enable Snap on Windows 8 Consumer Preview on systems with resolutions lower than 1376x768? My laptop has a resolution of 1280x800 and I'd love to be able to use Snap on it.

tehh4ck3r said:
Hi,
Is there anyway to enable Snap on Windows 8 Consumer Preview on systems with resolutions lower than 1376x768? My laptop has a resolution of 1280x800 and I'd love to be able to use Snap on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you come across a way to enable it, please share. I would love to have snap on my downscaled netbook display but it seems like they removed the registry key to enable it.

So Any luck enabling snap

not really sure if this counts as a reply or as a bucket of cold water but i remember reading in some of the older documentation of Win8 back when the Developer Preview came out, that the snap-in view for multiple apps would only work on widescreen resolutions with a minimum of 1366 X 768. i doubt M$ left any sorta wiggle room for a work-around.

psychocyst said:
not really sure if this counts as a reply or as a bucket of cold water but i remember reading in some of the older documentation of Win8 back when the Developer Preview came out, that the snap-in view for multiple apps would only work on widescreen resolutions with a minimum of 1366 X 768. i doubt M$ left any sorta wiggle room for a work-around.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya, They really didn't leave any ways to force it enabled in Consumer Preview, it's the only thing that keeps me from fully enjoying Metro as I would love to snap Messenger or Music.

ShadowEO said:
Ya, They really didn't leave any ways to force it enabled in Consumer Preview, it's the only thing that keeps me from fully enjoying Metro as I would love to snap Messenger or Music.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bump for this one. The majority of Windows 7 slates and tablet pc's are 1200x800 or below.
I hope someone can find or even make a workaround!

my laptop is 1280x800 too. In the windows 8 DP there's a hack that makes snap works on this resolution but on the CP version this doesn't work any more. how can MS disable this when there's a vast number of laptop still have this resolution

First make sure that you have a back up of your Windows 8 Registry file so that it will be useful in case you face some problems
Now open the Run Command i.e. 'Win+R'. Then type 'regedit' and hit Enter. Now you can see the Registry Editor window
You can now navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell
Under ImmersiveShell key, create a new key AppPositioner.
Now you have to select the newly created key "AppPositioner" and in right-side pane, create a new DWORD AlwaysEnableLSSnapping and set its value to 1.

If you have Internal Intel VGA chip you can download drivers that will allow you to alter your settings to have 1376x800, I have them as follows, you can try google,
Internal_VGA_Intel_32Bit_8.15.10.1912, I have apps running on my Netbook, the screen looks a bit squished, but it's working. Jim

For now the only way I think would work on Win8CP is custom monitor drivers with EDID override. For the moment the best I managed is to create higher resolution then allowed so part of screen is missing.
I did notice in EDID two fields resolution and actual pixel number for V and H part of resolution. My thinking is you create resolution of 1376x800. For Vertical resolution you set the same number of pixels as in stock resolution of 1280x800. However horizontal you set number of pixels visible as for 1280.
I hope then that resolution will say 1376x800 and snap will work. However as only part of pixels are enabled/visible as per driver windows should resize desktop to fit that.
Other option is an app that will communicate to os that resolution 1280x800 is actually 1376x800

Any developments?

No one has figured out a way to enable this?
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2

I got this to work, but I did it by just using NVidia to change my resolution to 1366X768 and then selected it and it works, but only one problem, the screen doesn't look clear enough, I mean, it made a little black in bottom and top, but it work perfectly, if you not use to your screen how it look and you don't mind, then you can try it, if you have NVidia.
open NVidia display setting and go to display, then change resolution and then click customize and click create custom resolution, change horizontal pixels to 1366 and change vertical lines to 768,after this click test and yes to save. then select the resolution you just created and click apply. done! it should work now.
remember to download the latest driver before doing this!

The problem with this is, that the snapped view has a fixed width of 320 pixels. Given that Metro Apps need at least 1024 pixels width to work you end up with 1344 and those are the minimum dimension developers have to care about. So it's highly likely that if you get to enable snap on lower resolution displays some apps will have missing/unreachable controls.
Some Apps might have a flexible enough Layout so this might work. Just wanted to let you know from where this minimum requirement arrises.

StevieBallz said:
The problem with this is, that the snapped view has a fixed width of 320 pixels. Given that Metro Apps need at least 1024 pixels width to work you end up with 1344 and those are the minimum dimension developers have to care about. So it's highly likely that if you get to enable snap on lower resolution displays some apps will have missing/unreachable controls.
Some Apps might have a flexible enough Layout so this might work. Just wanted to let you know from where this minimum requirement arrises.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes if all we were to do is force snap to enable. However on older cards, defo on older intel cards you could force any resolution via pixel compression of sorts.
In essance everything was getting smaller and smaller to fit the same actual size. Effect was you could get a 800x600 screen to display 1024x768 resolution and it would look ok but higher res meant less and less readable screen. It was loosing focus and everything was getting mixed together.
Even older ATI cards had similar but not anymore. Only nvidia kept it, reason bollaz has a small frame is because 1366x768 resolution is off different aspect ration then his screen can display so drivers are compensating by first compressing "pixels" to fit 1366 resolution in for example 1280 screen but also to make everything look normal (not stretched up/down or left/right) they compress those pixels till same aspect ratio is reached as max resolution. If it has to cmpress more it adds black frame as something has to be there.

ruscik said:
Yes if all we were to do is force snap to enable. However on older cards, defo on older intel cards you could force any resolution via pixel compression of sorts.
In essance everything was getting smaller and smaller to fit the same actual size. Effect was you could get a 800x600 screen to display 1024x768 resolution and it would look ok but higher res meant less and less readable screen. It was loosing focus and everything was getting mixed together.
Even older ATI cards had similar but not anymore. Only nvidia kept it, reason bollaz has a small frame is because 1366x768 resolution is off different aspect ration then his screen can display so drivers are compensating by first compressing "pixels" to fit 1366 resolution in for example 1280 screen but also to make everything look normal (not stretched up/down or left/right) they compress those pixels till same aspect ratio is reached as max resolution. If it has to cmpress more it adds black frame as something has to be there.
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Click to collapse
Bump for the sake of humanity.

No one? No reg-edits?

Dungeonscaper said:
First make sure that you have a back up of your Windows 8 Registry file so that it will be useful in case you face some problems
Now open the Run Command i.e. 'Win+R'. Then type 'regedit' and hit Enter. Now you can see the Registry Editor window
You can now navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell
Under ImmersiveShell key, create a new key AppPositioner.
Now you have to select the newly created key "AppPositioner" and in right-side pane, create a new DWORD AlwaysEnableLSSnapping and set its value to 1.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did anyone try this??
Sent from my HTC One V using xda app-developers app

Yeah, that was the very old hack that didn't even work on the second preview release. Shame on @Dungeonscaper for posting what looks like a soluti0n when, if he or she had actually read the thread, they'd have already seen it mentioned that the registry hack no longer works.

GoodDayToDie said:
Yeah, that was the very old hack that didn't even work on the second preview release. Shame on @Dungeonscaper for posting what looks like a soluti0n when, if he or she had actually read the thread, they'd have already seen it mentioned that the registry hack no longer works.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there a reason why this reg edit won't work? Is it the way Windows 8 determines screen resolution changed? It would be SO much more practical to let this be changed as multi tasking is a nightmare on an old laptop with Windows 8. I'm not sure if I can probably use this key I purchased on some other laptop if I was to format this system and go back to Windows 7 on this one.

Anyone else use it as a screen?

So one thing I was able to achieve recently was to set up the Nook as a screen mirror in a very simple fashion, thanks to folks at mobileread! I was wondering if anyone else uses their nooks as a screen?
Right now, I have two nooks set up such that each would mirror half of a laptop with the weird 1360x768 resolution. It's been great for reading academic journals because these PDFs are typically double columned.

Could you provide some details how you achieved this? Or any keywords how to find it ?

krzynier said:
Could you provide some details how you achieved this? Or any keywords how to find it ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would also love an explanation to that picture.
Is the nook getting the images via usb? Or wifi?
Are any special adapters needed?

krzynier said:
Could you provide some details how you achieved this? Or any keywords how to find it ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This was achieved using a simple python script written by kranu @ Mobileread. Here's the link. The original script was only made for a single screen that captured a 800x600 image of your host screen at a 1:1 ratio. If you wanted and knew python, you could easily make it capture a 1600x1200 image and compress it to fit the Nook's 800x600 screen.
shorty66 said:
I would also love an explanation to that picture.
Is the nook getting the images via usb? Or wifi?
Are any special adapters needed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The nook is getting screenshots from the host computer via WiFi. So literally no adapters needed. All you need is a browser on the nook and python installed on the host computer. So yes, this method will technically work from ANY e-ink screen with a browser, but ideally you want a browser that can go into "full screen" mode (no bars). There are few e-readers that have a 800mhz CPU that can be had for $30 or less. Hence why I think the nook is an ideal choice for doing this. You can have as many nooks as you want if you wanted to make a bigger screen.
There are other ways to achieve this, such as running a VNC viewer. But I opted for a simpler approach because I didn't intend to interact too much with the monitor, I simply needed it for reading.

Wow. Very nice.
Just to let people know, another approach is running VNC but the advantage of the screenshot thread here of course is that you can use more than 1 nook.

PoisonWolf said:
This was achieved using a simple python script written by kranu @ Mobileread. The original script was only made for a single screen that captured a 800x600 image of your host screen at a 1:1 ratio. If you wanted and knew python, you could easily make it capture a 1600x1200 image and compress it to fit the Nook's 800x600 screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just set the capture region to your monitor resolution
w,h=(1600,900) #width and height of capture region
and modify
image=wx.ImageFromBitmap(bitmap)
data=list(image.GetData())
to
image=wx.ImageFromBitmap(bitmap)
image = image.Scale(600, 800, wx.IMAGE_QUALITY_HIGH)
image = image.Rotate90(True)
data=list(image.GetData())
and then you have the monitor display scaled for nook screen size and rotated to landscape mode.
Big Kudos for kranu for the idea and script and for PoisonWolf to finding it

krzynier said:
Just set the capture region to your monitor resolution
w,h=(1600,900) #width and height of capture region
and modify
image=wx.ImageFromBitmap(bitmap)
data=list(image.GetData())
to
image=wx.ImageFromBitmap(bitmap)
image = image.Scale(600, 800, wx.IMAGE_QUALITY_HIGH)
image = image.Rotate90(True)
data=list(image.GetData())
and then you have the monitor display scaled for nook screen size and rotated to landscape mode.
Big Kudos for kranu for the idea and script and for PoisonWolf to finding it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is pretty awesome. I know little about python scripting. I think I'm going to use this to make a smaller capture region be scaled higher (make things appear larger).