Future trends in skins

Published on February 18, 2004 By Sput In WinCustomize Talk

It strikes me that as screen resolutions increase we are faced with a choice.

a) design things at the same size (in pixels) and hence have everything get smaller and smaller as resolution increases

design things bigger (within reason!) so that they can take advantage of increase detail whilst staying approximately the same final size to the user.

At present, it seems that most people (me included) are happy to luxuriate in the increased desktop realestate liberated by ever shrinking icons/window borders etc...BUT, what about when screens become 4000x3000 pixels?

Current skin/icon designs at that resolution on even a 19" screen (assuming that to be common in the future) would render even a 128x128 pixel icon at less than 1/2 an inch (1.23cm) across - and more worryingly, a 4 pixel window frame border at just 0.4 mm!

There will undoubtedly be changes to the way the GUI works in that time (Longhorn developments regarding use of Direct3D and emphasis of vector based interface designs noted), but is there milage in designing skins that will take advantage of these developments?

It would mean windows that are incredibly "chunky" looking on a current display @ 1024x768, or even 1400x1050 - but these designs will look great as technology catches up

Whatcha think?

Comments (Page 2)

craeonics

on Feb 18, 2004

Yeah, but, I wasn't talking about hardware resolutions, but software resolution. Windows will be drawn at 72 dpi no matter what res your hardware has.

Perhaps "dpi" isn't the right term for this. What I mean is that an icon will be drawn as (say) 48 pixels, regardless and independent of what your hardware res is. This is because the GUI is bitmap based.

So if you want to get that in sync with your hardware res, you'd either need multiple versions of each icon, scale things up or use vectors.

Alright, someone code me a vecotr based GUI! *drool*

craeonics

on Feb 18, 2004

Ahum, I appear to have completely re-iterated the first post.

At first, vectors would seem to be the ultimate solution. For scaling upwards that is. Scaling downwards is a different beast altogether. With vectors, you'd run the risk of critical details being blurred out when you get too small, so in that case bitmaps would be better.

Sput

on Feb 18, 2004

craeonics - an icon with 48 pixels will be drawn with 48 pixels - you're right - but the higher the resolution of the screen, the smaller each pixels will be

I'm not sure why you think that Windows can somehow scale icons to keep things the same size regardless of screen resolution. This just isn't the case at all.

Try switching your screen res down to 640x480 to see what I mean

Increased resolution on the screen means smaller "things" in Windows. The only (?) bit of Windows which can/does scale things to different sizes depending on resolution (if you ask it to) is the system fonts. Other than that, things are rendered on screen with the number of pixels they were created with, not the size they were created at.

Sput

on Feb 18, 2004

craeonics - the problem of scaling vector images to small sizes is a valid one - something that fonts address by using hinting as well as the basic vector data...they use other methods too, but hinting is the one I like

I can't imagine how hinting data would work with svg images though, so you're right - a fall back bitmap version of any interface would probably be needed....or, you just don't let people make things too small in the first place

craeonics

on Feb 18, 2004

Umm, yeah that's exactly my point.

When I talk about scaling, it's on the topic of "the future of skinning", if a GUI used that does allow scaling.

Sput

on Feb 18, 2004

Ahhh...I just read the bit about rotating things with vectors. What a cool feature that would be! I could lie down and have the stuff on screen swivel to stay the right way

craeonics

on Feb 18, 2004

Right, that one ^^^ should be in between your posts (otherwise it'd be out of context).

Sput

on Feb 18, 2004

craeonics - d'oh! I get you now! /IF/ a future GUI supports scaling things to keep things at a virtual 72 dpi (possibly for backward compatability with older apps that don't know about the new wizzy vector API?) /THEN/ things would grow/stay the same independantly of hardware resolution...Yup, I agree now

craeonics

on Feb 18, 2004

Speaking of rotation, something I miss in most graphic apps is the ability to rotate the canvas without translating the pixels (and thus blurring, anti-aliasing and messing up the image).

Normally when I draw, I draw wiht my right hand and rotate the paper back and forth with my left hand all the time.

The only app I know that seems to incorporate that is Painter.

craeonics slides off topic

kongit

on Feb 18, 2004

true type fonts are vectors I think.

and yes vector is what the gui should be made of next. when the pixels get so small you can't see them, you will be able to size a vector to any size on the monitor and it should look sharp. small or big.

Jafo

on Feb 18, 2004

The issue of size of an icon with a higher resolution...like 4000 x 3000 pixels is determinate on whether the 'screen' is the same size with a smaller dot pitch or has the same dot pitch as now and the screen is simply larger.

The former means the icon is a fraction of its 'original' size, the latter means it's the same size......but you will need to sit further from the screen to see all of it and the icon will be hence smaller through distance.

Quite different issues...

Sput

on Feb 18, 2004

jafo - I was assuming in this that the screen can physically display the pixels that are thrown at it, hence the dot pitch being up to the task...something CRTs are not likely to be able to do without growing to huge proportions

LCDs on the other hand are cramming more and more physical real pixels (OK, so some of them may not work

) into a smaller and smaller area...they already cram 1600x1200 actual pixels into a 16" screen area, so in 12 months, who knows? BTW - on the laptop with that screen - not one failed pixel

[Message Edited]

Sput

on Feb 19, 2004

OK I have to admit now that Windows does scale certain elements based on the DPI the video card driver is set to. When did it start doing this? Or is it just the Trident driver on here that's doing this?

Anhow, I've now discovered a completely new way to make a carfully sized and designed skin look awful! It seems that some elements of the start menu for instance are scaled based on the content, regardless of the "fixed" sizes I though were set for them....

Messing with DPIs from 48 to 200+ backwards and forwards has also left me trying to type this with a font on screen at about 5 point even though it's ow back the the default 96dpi....strange things going on!

Sput

on Feb 19, 2004

Yikes...my spelling/typing is awful when I can't read what I'm typing (see above)...

BoXXi

on Feb 19, 2004

I don't understand any of the above posts......

just shoot me!

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