HotRod said:
I have a program that will only run on a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024
or greater, but the program is very graphically nothing. Is there any way
to fake a screen resolution so that I can use this program on a lower
resultion?
Now that I've loaded the program the problem I am having is that the
buttons
and some of the screen is off of my monitor. Is there a way to ad scroll
bars?
The software is PET5 Porsche parts manuals
From the screenshots it would appear this software requires
a high resolution to display the technical drawings in the left
panel. This is poor design, IMHO. A better solution would
be to allow the user to view the drawings in a separate window
(even a separate moinitor) as and when required, rather than
occupying desktop real estate unecessarily.
The obvious solution is to increase your resolution to the
minimum required by the software (provided your hardware
supports the resolution of course). If you prefer lower resolutions,
consider creating a separate profile for this (and other) high
resolution applications.
There was also a program called QRes for Windows 9x (not to
be confused with the QuickRes PowerToy). This effectively allowed
you to set specific resolutions to specific programs via their
shortcut properties. This was handy when running children's games
which often required 8-bit colour depth and 640x480 resolution.
If there's an equivalent utility for WinXP, you might consider using
this.
The only other alternative is to use a scrolling desktop, where a virtual
desktop extends off the physical screen. Not to be confused with so-
called virtual desktops, which are really nothing more than desktop
switchers, moving the mouse to any side or corner of the physical
screen causes the underlying desktop to scroll in the opposite direction.
Some video cards, particularly in laptops, include a scrolling desktop
feature. To enable the feature in these cards you normally just have to
set the resolution in excess of the hardware's physical capabilities, but
some also include the option to enable the feature even at lower
resolutions.
There may be third party scrolling desktops available, but all I could
find in my brief search were desktop switchers, which are a dime a
dozen and completely useless in this case. Scrolling desktops seem to
be pretty rare (those I did find only applied to Linux).
Switching desktops (or virtual desktops) would actually be more useful
if they actually allowed different resolutions on each desktop. I haven't
seen any with this capability. Maybe I should write one...
