(Sorry if I missed the answer)
So I just started out making an XNA game for windows.
And while designing the UI, I was wondering how to scale the UI at different resolutions.
So, imagine that I make a UI for a 1920*1080 screen, how do I make sure this is displayed correctly on a smaller 4*3 screen?
Thanks in advance!
Simon.
Usually one designs the GUI in a way that will be usable in the lowest resolution your game offers (traditionally 800x600), then you are sure everything fits correctly at all resolutions.
This is usually why games at higher resolutions seem to have a lot more space for the "playfield" and less for UI than at smaller resolutions.
You could scale the UI once the resolution is higher as well, as easy as using the scale parameter on SpriteBatch.Draw, or you could do it a bit more smartly, by having your assets 9-sliced and aligned to WIDTH/HEIGHT constant percentages.
Related
I have a personal project designed for the desktop that I previously created in Adobe XD, and now I would like to put it on Behance. To do so, I need to adapt the layout, designed for the desktop, to mobile.
I don't usually design for smaller screens, so I am wondering how much I need to decrease text and element sizes? For example, if I have a text with a font size of 40px, what calculations should I use to decrease the size for mobile? Is there a default percentage to reduce desktop values? Alternatively, are there visual rules that other designers follow?
I always design for Bootstrap, but I'm not sure if I am thinking about mobile the right way.
I've also posted this on the User Experience Stack Exchange forum, but I'm not sure which one is the best for my question.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and advice.
I have designed mostly for desktops as a traditional web designer, and now I'm trying to migrate to UI/UX.
Modern devices do most of the scale conversion work for you by adequately scaling the viewport to compensate for the smaller screens and often higher resolutions. Depending on the type of application you are designing, the technology is different, but the result is very similar.
For example, if you were implementing the design for the Web, you would likely need to use browser features like media queries to manage your content.
However, because you are focusing on the design of the site, you should not need to worry about the 'how', so you can focus on what to do.
Here are some tips:
Elements and text appear roughly the same size on desktop and mobile if you hold the device at a casual but comfortable distance and compare it to the size it appears on your desktop's screen at an average viewing distance. You can try this by going to a website built for mobile like Apple's.
Because of the similar size but reduced screen dimensions, you need to simplify your design, avoid multiple columns (especially for phones).
Because you see a smaller portion of your design at once on mobile, there is less need for significant visual hierarchy. For example, if you have multiple heading levels with a significant visual size difference on the desktop, you can probably get away with making them closer in size on mobile.
If you want to see what your design looks like on mobile, try emailing the design to your phone, save it to your pictures, and load the image full screen. You may need to zoom the image in a bit so that the left and right of the design are touching the sides of your phone's screen. If your text looks too small or your elements are too large, adjust the design and load it on your phone again. Keep doing this until you get it right.
With a little practice and effort, you will get the hang of Mobile design. And, if you want to take it to the next level, try researching mobile first design. Here is just one of many articles on the subject.
Todays displays have a quite huge range in size and resolution. For example, my 34.5cm × 19.5cm display (resulting in a diagonal of 39.6cm or 15.6") has 1366 × 768 pixels, whereas the MacBook Pro (3rd generation) with a 15" diagonal has 2880×1800 pixels.
Multiple people complained that everything is too small with such high resolution displays (see example). That is simple to explain when developers use pixels to define their GUI. For "traditional displays", this is not a big problem as the pixels might have about the same size on most monitors. But on the new monitors with much higher pixel density the pixels are simply smaller.
So how can / should user interface developers deal with that problem? Is it possible to get the physical size of the screen? Is it possible to set physical sizes instead of pixel-based ones? Is that still a problem (it's been a while since I last read about it) or was that fixed meanwhile?
(While css seems to support cm, when I try here it, it is not the set size).
how can / should user interface developers deal with that problem?
Use a toolkit or framework that support resolution independence. WPF is built from the ground up to be resolution-independent, but even old framework like Windows Forms can learn new tricks. OSX/iOS and Windows (or browser if we're talking about web) itself may try to take care the problem by automatic scaling, but if there's bitmap graphic involved, developers might need to provide different bitmaps such in Android (which face most varying resolution and densities compared to other OS)
Is it possible to get the physical size of the screen?
No, and developers shouldn't care about it. Developers should only care about the class of the device (say, different UI for tablet and smartphone), and perhaps the DPI to decide which bitmap resource to use. Vector resource and font should be scaled by the framework.
Is that still a problem (it's been a while since I last read about it) or was that fixed meanwhile?
Depend on when you last read about it. Windows support is still spotty, even for the internal apps itself, and while anyone developing in WPF or UWP have it easy, don't expect major third party apps to join soon. OSX display scaling seems to work a bit better, while modern mobile OS are either running on limited range of resolution (iOS and Windows Phone) or handle every resolution imaginable quite nicely (Android)
There are a few ways to deal with different screen sizes, for example when I make mobile apps in java, I either use DIP(Density Independent Pixels; They stay at a fixed size) or make objects occupy a percentage of the screen with simple math. As for web development, you can use VW and VH (Viewport Width and Viewport Height), by adding these to the end of a value instead of px, the objects take up a percentage of the viewport. For example 100vh takes 100% of the viewport height. Then what I think is the best way to do it, but time consuming, is to use a library like Bootstrap that automatically resizes elements, even when the window is resized. W3Schools has a good tutorial on bootstrap and more detailed explainations on any of these options can be looked up with an easy google search.
The design of the GUI in today display diversity era is real challenge. I would suggest several hints, mainly about the GUI applications design:
Never set or expect constant pixel size of the text - the user can change it from the system settings of the OS. Use some real-world measures for the text and check its pixel size when drawing. Provide some way to put the random size text in the boundaries of the window.
Never set or expect constant pixel size of the GUI widgets. Try to position them on the window in some adaptive way - according to the size of the window. Most GUI widget toolkits today have such instruments.
Never set or expect constant pixel size dialog windows. Let the OS to choose the size for you and then use what you get (X). Or, if you need to set some size and position (Windows), define it as a percent of the screen size.
If possible use scalable image formats for the icons. SVG is great for icons actually. Using sets of bitmap icons with different sizes is acceptable, but highly non-optimal as memory use and still will not provide perfect scaling in most cases.
Android has a nice way to make screen elements scaleable so they look good on most devices. One of those is Device Independent Pixels:
basics of device-independent-pixels
Is there anything similar to dips on Windows Phone 7?
What about autosizing a control to its contents? Such as width=wrap_content?
Thanks!
WP7 devices always have the same resolution so you shouldn't need to worry about DPI.
While devices can have different physical sizes they shouldn't differ too much. If you are really concerned you shoudl simply design and test on devices with the smallest and largest physical sizes.
If you still run into issue then it's probably due to trying to put too much on the screen. If that's the case then you should redesign the app.
One of the original design objectives for WP7 was to create a platform which did not suffer the consequences of device fragmentation such as wildly differing screen sizes and resolutions. As such there is no need to have to code for them.
NB This is the case for WP7, however WP8 supports 3 resolutions. For details on how to support WP8 see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj206974(v=vs.105).aspx
Not sure if that answers your question, but the Grid control is usually the best approach when you want to create a layout that adapts to different sizes.
I don't know of an equivalent to Android's device-independent pixels, though.
Is there a standard max for the width of the main content area of a web page? I want to maximize screen real estate without affecting usability. I've seen a lot of sites stick to 980px or less. Anyone have any suggestions?
Target either the 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution.
For 800x600 it is around 750px.
For 1024x768 it would be 970px.
I'm assuming you're referring to the wrapper width since you mentioned 980.
The most ideal solution is to not think of pixels at all and instead rely on ems/%s and scaling, be as fluid as possible so your design fits on small mobile devices and your elements heights are not fixed but auto. Example being: http://www.456bereastreet.com/
But if you're stuck with web designers who still think pixel and you know for sure you'll be unable to get them to try making images that are liquid/fluid, I would say shoot for 960 pixels in width so you have enough viewing area in a 1024x768 with scrollbars in IE6/XP, but this really depends on your audience and the majority of your audience's screen resolutions.
Research, such as that referenced here suggests that people have a more difficult time reading long lines of text. That's why I restrict my content width to 800px or so.
You have to first ask the question. Who is my audience?
There's no "standard", especially in this age of PDAs/smartphones/netbooks/smartbooks/kiosks/etc... - while it may sound cliche, the best thing is to design a fluid layout not depending on exact screen size.
The answer may change depending on your intended/anticipated user base, of course (e.g. assume 1024 px screen width leaving you with 980 working px - and consciously decide that you are not interested in supporting anyone with smaller screen resolution).
Another solution is to allow size layout customization by making it into portal-like with user having control of layout of the portlets (ala My Yahoo).
960 is a pretty common standard, and the rationale behind that figure is the fact that fitting on a 1024 pixel wide screen will allow a big majority of your users to see the content without scrolling. See here for one of 100's of sites that give access to browser & user system capabilities statistics for some initial inspiration.
But in the end, it'll up to you to understand the structure of your customer base - if your site targets iPhones, targetting 1024 pixel wide screens may not be your smartest decision.
Not sure about absolute pixel values, but one thing I'd make sure of is that the text columns don't get too wide. There is a number of characters beyond which reading comprehension is impaired.
1000 pixels in width, is what I use which fits into the minimum 1024x768 resolution used these days without a horizontal scroller at the bottom of your browser ....
I m, on a daily basis creating web pages. My preferred development screen resolution is: 1600x1200 but what is yours?
And do you use any other plug-ins?
I use window re sizer 1.0 for Firefox. But are there better options?
In my opinion, if you're using a window resizer, you're already on top of the game. I try to aim for pages that work well on a 1024x768 screen, accounting for scrollbars and toolbars and whatnot. It may be worth resizing your screen to 1024x768 (or whatever the minimum is that you support) every once in a while just to fully understand that user experience, but in general the window resizer keeps you aware enough.
I disagree - fixed size layouts are just fine. In fact, Stackoverflow.com uses a fixed size layout, as do a great many professional sites out there. The reason? Predictability.
A few things:
Never have horizontal scroll bars
Try to avoid vertical scroll bars when it's reasonable to do so
Remember, AJAX and other newer technologies can help you save space on your page with popups and other niceties.
My 2 cents,
-Doug
It shouldn't matter - design your web pages to be flexible and fluid such that they degrade gracefully on any reasonable screen resolution. Cater for mobile devices with very minimal screen space and massive displays.
I develop with a 2x1440x900 setup, but I leave Firefox as a window at 1024x768 using Web Developer Toolbar.
The dual monitor setup is really useful when you have the code on one screen and Firefox on the other.
I wouldn't go over 800x600. However, ideally your layout is not fixed to a screen size, and can resize and still look right.
I stick with 1024x768. It's usually big enough for what you need to display, and not everyone is quite to 1600x1200 yet. Maybe in a few years. I'd stick with a smaller display...that way it may force you to be more design conscience.
Two screens are invaluable regardless of screen size. One screen to run your editor, and one screen to run your browser. It's amazing how much smoother development becomes.
With my stats showing 1024x768 as my users' dominant resolution, I certainly wouldn't go below that. Beyond that, I agree with, apparently, everyone else here that fixed size layouts are just a bad idea, and your design should adapt to render context.
For the love of Pete don't use pixel sized fonts. Use em or pt sizing instead.
It all really depends on what kind of page you are designing. I would try to design with the ability for the page to scale in mind. There is nothing I hate more than having to zoom in a page that was designed for 800x600 on a 1920x1200 display.
I think the best advice given here is just to try it at different resolutions instead of your native one, and try to make it look good at a variety of sizes.