How Do I Handle Windows 7's 125% or 150% Magnification (Delphi)

Question

Windows 7 has added on its Control Panel, Appearance and Personalization, Display setting, an ability to Magnify the text and other items by 125% or 150%.

When that is done, some of the contents of the Forms and Dialogs of my Delphi 2009 program get cut off.

What changes do I need to make to ensure that all my forms and dialogs will look fine under any magnification setting on Windows 7.

Answer 1

It sounds like you're referring to the text size setting, which has existed in various forms in Windows for years, and Delphi forms' interactions with this setting and their automatic scaling. I haven't got Windows 7 here to check, so I'm basing this only on your description.

Problems caused by this are very common in Delphi applications. You may want to try setting the form's Scaled property to false, but read the information in these links first - doing that might not really be the best solution, but it depends on your program.

Try these links:

• This very useful article explains how common this is by saying, "Does this sound familiar? You've finished that elegant form and polished the look and feel of the controls, and you send it off to your end user. And the first thing the user complains about is that the form is unreadable on their Windows PC. They complain that the text labels are chopped off, the edit controls run past the edge of the form, and the bottom of the form isn't even visible. What happened?". Good thing it has a solution, hey :)

• This delphi.about.com article is also worth reading.

Hope that helps!

David