form sizes and fonts change on different PCs

[uplate]

I browsed a lot of posts related to fonts, and pored over my "Mastering Access 2000" and "Access 2000 Power Programming" books, but I couldn't find answers to my specific questions.

I have many years of experience with Access, but I've only recently become interested in making my forms look nice on a variety of user PC configurations. Now, like many others, I sometimes spend too much time formatting a form so it looks really nice on my PC, only to find formatting problems on the user's PC. For example, a label using Arial Rounded MT Bold looks great on my PC but is cut off on the user's PC. Similarly, Tahoma on buttons looks nice on my PC but looks bigger and bolder on the user's PC.

At first I thought this was probably a font problem. But then I realized that even with the same screen resolution, the forms themselves (not just the fonts) appeared bigger on the user's PC. Some forms didn't even fit inside a maximized Access window, whereas they certainly did on my PC - again, this is with the same screen resolution. So now I don't know if it's a font problem, some other problem, or perhaps multiple problems.

Which leads to my questions:

(1) If I set the size of a form on my PC, and the screen resolution is the same on my PC and the user's PC, then why does my form show up relatively bigger on some users' PCs? How can one control the look of a form if the form properties are not applied identically on different PCs?

(2) Why do all the fonts look bigger and fatter / bolder on some users' PCs?

(3) Is there a user-configurable Windows setting that overrides the font size settings I assign to controls?

(4) How can I determine in code if specific fonts are supported (if this is a necessary step)?

(5) What is the industry best practice for managing font selection, allowing for the possibility that the desired fonts may not be supported?

Thanks for your help...

 

[uplate]

narrowing question scope to form sizing

Hmmm, no responses. Perhaps I asked too many questions, questions that were too open-ended, or questions that people thought I should have researched more myself. If so, I apologize - I'm new to posting on forums.

So I read the "how to ask good questions" post and did more research (I had done a lot of searching before I posted, but wasn't sure what terms to use). I found part of my answer on Microsoft's typography page:

What I found there were lists of products and the fonts that ship with them, which will hopefully allow me to choose fonts that won't be substituted.


But what about form size (i.e. the portion of the Access window occupied by the form)? Why is form size not consistent across PCs, when their screen resolutions are identical and the Access window is maximized?


Thanks...