Did you know you can also make your font smaller?

I have a very nice 24" widescreen monitor that supports a native resolution of 1920x1200. This is excellent cus I can put alot of data on my screen.

Yet I feel that I want more space for webdevelopment, so I can put my editing program on the screen while I have my browser next to it to view the results while I have my chatprogram open and also while I have a tv stream open to watch some tv (more listening to it but anyway).

I can pretty much get all this on my screen and work with it ordered, but it does make the workspace rather small.

Now ofcource, I could solve that on various ways, but the way I solved it is probably the one many people would like to do.

Although I could ofcource buy a much larger screen or hook up a 2nd one, I didn't do this.

Instead, I changed the windows DPI settings so that the font becomes smaller. This also shrinks many applications a bit, and guess what, smaller applications mean less space is wasted.

I've put the DPI setting to 90% because the default 100% is a bit of an overkill really. It could probably be even smaller if my eyes were a bit better.

Now you probably wonder, how do you change the DPI setting?

First of all, this setting is present in all Windows versions, including XP and Vista, but even 95 had it.

I own a copy of XP so I'll tell how it works in XP.

Go to control panel, display settings.

Go to the tab Settings.

Press the button Advanced.

On DPI-settings combobox, select manual settings.

Here you go, you can set it to your needs. Be aware though, if you play with this setting, you might create a case where the screen is either too big or too little for you to be able to work with it. While too little wouldn't be that much of a problem, too big can actually cause you to not being able to access the control anymore. Be ready to use the keyboard to access those off-screen items before you go crazy with those settings.

After you've changed the DPI setting, it will ask you to install files from the Windows CD and reboot afterwards. You need to do this for it to work correctly.

I've known this useful trick. Never bothered to use it though.

...perhaps I should.

Or you can hold CTRL and scroll down on the scroll wheel. ._.

That's only certain applications.

That's only certain applications.

Well, people can try that first 'cause it's easier. :3

It even only works on certain mouses and certain browsers.

My trick works on every window, which is alot more usefull if you need more space on your screen.

I've been looking for ways to save desktop space, so thanks
It doesn't make too big a difference, but it does no harm, and every little bit helps.

I've been looking for ways to save desktop space, so thanks
It doesn't make too big a difference, but it does no harm, and every little bit helps.

I've actually thought about something to save even more desktop space: Do this trick, and set it to say... 50dpi, which is like twice as small, giving double the room. Obviously you won't be able to read the text. So to combat that, set the fontsize, manually in the style to make them about twice as big. That'll give you tiny borders with readable text. The only downside is that images aren't scaled with this, which can cause images to be unrecognisable, especially if there's text in them that you won't be able to see anymore. (for instance the icons on the forum that say reply etc...)