As anyone who uses an ultra-portable laptop would know, reading ultra-minimalistic weblogs with 9px-sized fonts on a high-resolution 1400×1050 display panel spanning an entire 12″ is like an everyday blessing for eye-care companies. Now’s a good time to invest in the laser eye surgery business.

Whilst desktop monitors has always maintained the adequately readable 96 DPI standard with LCD displays, pixel-density on laptops has reached as high as 144 DPI, and that means smaller interfaces and fonts. But who doesn’t want more pixels? The more pixels, the clearer the image.

Windows Vista aims to reduce the negative effects of high-DPI displays by introducing an updated DPI-scaling engine for the desktop compositor. This allows icons, interfaces and text to be scaled bigger to compensate for the extra pixels. In theory, everything should look just as crisp and detailed compared to the default 96 DPI. But in practice, due to lack of vectorized interface elements and icons, it’s not perfect. So exactly how good does it look? I’ve put together this comparison to show you exactly that.

Hover over the links to change the image.
Please note: the images may take short while to appear due to the high quality and large file sizes.

96 DPI (Default) | 120 DPI (125%) | 144 DPI (150%) | 192 DPI (200%)

As you can see, the interface scales quite nicely all the way up to 144DPI. Everything is still reasonably crisp and usable. But when you get to 192DPI, things become awkward. For example, the search icon in Windows Explorer is definitely out-of-place, and the power control buttons in the Start menu is way out of proportion. Also to note, sadly Sidebar gadgets do not scale at all.

But it doesn’t stop here.

Continue reading →

Windows Calendar is a lightweight calendaring application newly adopted to the Windows family of bundled accessories. But it is so lightweight, it doesn’t even include public holiday dates. However thank heavens for interoperability, there’s an easy fix.

There is an extensive library of preset calendar dates on the internet, and with Windows Calendar’s subscription feature, we can simply download this data. For this example, I’m going to use Apple’s iCal library.

1. Open up Apple’s library of religious and world holiday calendars.
2. Click on the calendar you wish to subscribe to.
3. Windows Calendar should open up and prompt you to confirm your calendar subscription. Click “Next”.
4. (Wait until pigs fly)
5. Name your calendar appropriately (ex. “Australian Holidays”).
6. Click “OK” and you’re done.

Some sites may not automatically allow you to subscribe to their calendars. In this case, simply copy the URL for the iCal-formatted calendar, click “Subscribe” in the Windows Calendar toolbar and continue.

Subscribing to public calendars isn’t only limited to public holidays. You can keep a track of movie openings, DVD releases and even TV episodes. For example, I’m a Lost fanatic, and with this season 3 episodes calendar, I’ll never miss a cliffhanging episode again.

iCalShare offers a huge database of over 4300 subscribable calendars in 40 different topics. You’ll never miss a beat.

Adobe has been updating its website due to the launching of Adobe Acrobat Reader 8, but unexpectedly, I also noticed a link to the Photoshop CS3 beta also featured. As the byline states, it is supposed to be released “today”, but neither does the image or link pointing to Adobe Labs work.

Either this was leaked early, or the site is not ready yet. Even if it doesn’t come out today, it is definitely coming soon.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 has been a long-awaited for release for Mac users since it will finally support Intel-based Macs natively. It will also bring the much anticipated non-destructive layer filtering feature. Think Secret estimated CS3 could ship as early as end of this year or next year, but a beta now in December confirms it won’t be shipping this year.

This is will be the first time Adobe is releasing a public beta for its flagship design application, Photoshop. Recently, Adobe has tried to become more transparent with its internal developments with the introduction of Adobe blogs and Adobe Labs – a community environment for pre-release testing of software and technologies.

Update: Adobe has since removed the link on the frontpage. Not a good sign 🙁

Update 2: I have contacted Adobe to comment on this.

Update 3: Adobe has declined to comment. “What we can say is that web hiccups happen from time to time.”

Update 4: AppleInsider says the beta will be released this Friday, the 15th of December. They also have some nice information on CS3 like an “Advanced” SKU. However I don’t like how they stated “the CS3 beta was reported exclusively by AppleInsider” about 4 days after this post.

They came in boxes, to form…

A caperpillar!

I was going to build an Eiffel Tower out of caps, but I have better things to do. 😛

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The covers are off on the new Microsoft Expression design suite. Everything we’ve known so far regarding Expression Blend as well as the new sub-domain names has been right, even Robert McLaws was nearly dead-on with his speculation on Expression Media. But even so, several new and exciting mini-announcements emerged.

Expression suite rebranding

First and foremost, the new packaging. It looks like Windows Vista and Office 2007 weren’t going to be the only products spoiled with the well-received pop-out curved box design. The box-art hasn’t been changed much from the previous box designs, keeping both the yellow-label and artistically-patterned backgrounds. The names has obviously changed, and Windows XP sticker removed. Interesting to note, Expression Blend is the only product name that has been trademarked. Why the other products haven’t been trademarked (yet)? Go figure.

The other obvious change is the inclusion of a new product suite, called Expression Studio. Expression Studio is a superset of all four Expression products in a bundle that one would expect to sell for cheaper.

Richard Clark also found an Amazon entry for Expression Web indicating it will retail for $269.10. That’s nearly $130 cheaper than Adobe’s counterpart, Dreamweaver 8, which retails for $399. Still expensive, but will definitely appeal to new web designers starting out.

“WPF/E”, cross-platform & media support

Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere, the mouthful, has been a quiet devil since its original announcement at PDC in 2005. However since today, developers will be able to develop and deploy on this new platform. Jargon lovers will be saddened to know that the codename, “WPF/E”, will be replaced with a more friendlier name in the future.

Microsoft is also delivering its promise for full feature parity across major platforms and browsers; including Windows, Macs, Safari, Firefox and obviously Internet Explorer. The size of downloads for these client plugins are on-par compared to the obvious competitor, Flash. The “WPF/E” (CTP) client comes under 1MB for Windows, and 3MB for Macs (PowerPC & Intel binaries in one package).

“WPF/E” will also support Windows Media Audio and Video streaming for cross-platform distribution. Finally, Mac users will be able to view the previously proprietary WMV9 formatted content in OS X one way or another. The included VC-1 codec will possibly stir up the competition with Flash Video being the same high-quality codec used in HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays. But don’t expect streaming 1080p videos of your favorite TV shows from YouTube anytime soon. It’ll clog the tubes!

Sean Alexander

For more information on this and more, please visit the Expression site, WPF/E site and Sean Alexander’s weblog, who is now the director for the Rich Media Platform. Sean is most noted for his work on Media Center, portable media devices and the Windows Sidebar.

I asked (the infamous Microsoft watching) Mary Jo Foley for her thoughts on the Expression suite. She said, “Microsoft needs to make sure not to alienate its core developer audience, while it goes after the designer market (which is new for Microsoft). I’m already seeing some bloggers question Microsoft’s partitioning of the market.”

It’s going to be interesting to see how fast, if at all, Expression will be adopted in the currently monopolized market by Adobe (and formerly Macromedia).