1080P Least Common Denominator (1 Viewer)

I've decided to develop all Access Forms for 1080P It's a sad resolution to use because of its unnatural 16/9 aspect ratio.

But what are you gong to do?

Thales750 said:

unnatural 16/9 aspect ratio

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Unnatural?

If you care to look at your own field of view you will find that it is far closer to 16:9 than it is to 4:3.

The only reason telvision (and later, computer monitors) were 4:3 is it was impractical to build a CRT too far from square proportions. Indeed the first televisions used a round "picture tube".

By "unnatural" I mean, for a computer screen, not a television.

The computer industry copied the 1080P TV screen ratio because it allowed them to consolidate manufacturing to get an increase in economy of scale. Before the 1080P HD standard, the standard for high end computer screens was 1200P. The 16/10 ratio is easier to design ergonomic user interfaces than the 16/9 ration of the 1080P.


The long aspect ration is preferred when viewing photographic material. But, is difficult to organize forms, and with reports which are designed primarily to be printed in a portrait format, they are even worse.

I ran into that a while ago. Tried a few things like computing how much space I had on screen so I could dynamically resize my forms. However, the thing that would have let me resize text boxes by recomputing how much space I would need for a given text string at a given font size turns out not to work in form context, only in report context.

The U.S. government won't let me run freeware because they have this rule about unsupported code, so the freeware solutions that let me do this in form context are out of the question. I could just take a guess at it, but when you try to put fractional font sizes in a text box, it doesn't always look quite right because not all fractions are acceptable to Access. Thererfore, some aspect ratios and fill factors don't come out quite right either.

I solved the problem another way. I ignore it. This means, of course, that I have some unused space on the right-hand side of my screens. What I tell my users is that I have conveniently left them some working space to "pin" another window while they are working with my application. After all, I am trying to be considerate of my clientele.

I never put any effort into resizing - do not see the benefit but just a lot of pain.

Also, many are unaware of the automatic "stretching" options for controls, accessible through Anchoring. Check it out before putting any effort into resizing code.

The_Doc_Man said:

I solved the problem another way. I ignore it. This means, of course, that I have some unused space on the right-hand side of my screens. What I tell my users is that I have conveniently left them some working space to "pin" another window while they are working with my application. After all, I am trying to be considerate of my clientele.

Click to expand...

Got an intractable design problem? Call it a feature.

I made some form templates with various resolutions. But it seems that everyone is going to 1080P So as Doc says, too wide for the height, leave some blank space.

Another thing to do is make buttons in a vertical matrix either at the left or the right of the form.