Working with VGA screens

[Erel]

Edit: Basic4ppc version 6.30 includes a new compilation target: Forced QVGA. In this method VGA screens will behave as regular QVGA screens, making it simpler to target both VGA and QVGA devices.

Windows Mobile devices come with two types of screens.
The regular QVGA screen: 240 * 320 (regular), 240 * 240 (square screen) or 320 * 240 (landscape).
High resolution screens - VGA: 480 * 640 (regular), 480 * 480 (square screen) or 640 * 480 (landscape).

VGA devices use a special mechanism to properly show applications which were not designed for VGA screens. It is called pixel doubling.
Each pixel is doubled and the result is a pseudo lower resolution screen (QVGA).

Non-optimized compiled applications use pixel doubling. Therefore your application will show exactly the same on VGA and QVGA screens.

Optimized compiled applications do not use this method (.Net CF 2.0 restriction).
This allows you to take advantage of the higher resolution screen.
However if you don't explicitly handle VGA screens, your application will not show properly on such devices.

The following code automatically changes the layout of all controls to match the VGA screen:

Sub Globals
    Dim Controls(0)
End Sub

Sub App_Start
    If form1.Height > 400 Then ChangeToVGA
    Form1.Show
End Sub

Sub ChangeToVGA
    Controls() = GetControls("")
    For i = 0 To ArrayLen(Controls())-1
        Select ControlType(Controls(i))
            Case "ListBox","NumUpDown","Button","TextBox","Label","ComboBox","Panel","RadioBtn","Table","ImageButton","CheckBox","Image"
                Control(Controls(i)).Left = 2 * Control(Controls(i)).Left
                Control(Controls(i)).Top = 2 * Control(Controls(i)).Top
                Control(Controls(i)).Height = 2 * Control(Controls(i)).Height
                Control(Controls(i)).Width = 2 * Control(Controls(i)).Width
'*** Uncomment these lines if your application includes Tables.
'                If ControlType(Controls(i)) = "Table" Then
'                    tbl = Controls(i)
'                    For i2 = 0 To Control(tbl,Table).ColCount-1
'                        col = Control(tbl,Table).ColName(i2)
'                        Control(tbl,Table).ColWidth(col) = Control(tbl,Table).ColWidth(col) * 2
'                    Next
'                End If
        End Select
    Next
End Sub

'Controls' is an array that later holds all controls.
Somewhere in the beginning of the program you should check one of the forms height (doesn't matter which form), and call ChangeToVGA if necessary.
ChangeToVGA should only be called once and it will handle all the controls on all forms.

* Calendars controls do not show properly on VGA screens (with the optimized compiler). It will be fixed in the future.
* The image in ImageButtons and Images controls not in cStretchImage mode will be smaller on VGA screens. You should use two sets of images in that case.

[peacemaker]

Seems to me each "Panel" contaning other controls should be called, too.

Edit:
Oh, Control(Controls(i)).

[Erel]

GetControls("") returns all the controls on all forms. Unlike GetConfrols("Form1") which will return only Form1 direct sons.

[peacemaker]

Yes, thanks, all works fine.

[berndgoedecke]

Hello Erel,
with controls that are dirrectly placed in the Form your workaround works well, but the first time I had problems with it where the controls on a panel.
I scaled that controls separatly and it computes well. But now I have a VGA-problem with the Treeview-icons. How should I scale them?
On the way: working with VGA in B4P is very hard, because the appereance is three times different: The desktop is another as the device and both are different as the compiled version, particulary if you should work with Fullscreen2(False,True), which will not work if you run the source in the device editor.
Isn't it possible to have a real VGA-compatible device-editor

Best regards

berndgoedecke

[Erel]

You can add this code to handle the TreeView control:

Case "TreeView.TreeView":
                Control(Controls(i),TreeView).Left = 2 * Control(Controls(i),TreeView).Left
                Control(Controls(i),TreeView).Top = 2 * Control(Controls(i),TreeView).Top
                Control(Controls(i),TreeView).Height = 2 * Control(Controls(i),TreeView).Height
                Control(Controls(i),TreeView).Width = 2 * Control(Controls(i),TreeView).Width
                Control(Controls(i),TreeView).ImageSize(50,50)

You should initialize the treeviews (with New1) before calling the ChangeToVGA sub.
Load images and assign them only after calling this sub.

A VGA device IDE will be available in the future.

[berndgoedecke]

Hello Erel,
Much hanks for TreeView-scaling and the hint of an in future avaliable VGA-IDE.
I do it await in the hope to have an easier job.

Best Regards

berndgoedecke

[yildi]

Hi,

I am trying to adapt my TRPPC applet to make it automatically compatible with QVGA/VGA and Portrait/Landscape screens.
I have come upon a strange problem (maybe I am stupid). I am trying to set the height of a table in a panel in a way to occupy the totality of the residual height after having accounted the space for other controls and the margins I want around them. But this automatically computed height gets bigger that the real residual space if the table needs scroll bars. So I understand that the size of these bars are not included in the .Height property of a Table. Am I wright?
In order to solve the problem, I subtract some supplementary height when I set the height of the table (52 pixels in VGA). I have a menu in my application.

Is there a better way to automatically set the height of the table?

Regards,

Murat

[Erel]

I'm not sure that I correctly understood your problem.
I suggest that you start a new thread and post a small code that demonstrates it if possible.

[yildi]

OK. I will do it when I have sometime to simplify my code.