Friday, August 25, 2017

IBM Notes 9.0.1 Feature Pack 9 is available and here is my favorite enhancement

IBM Notes 9.0.1 Feature Pack 9 includes this:
High resolution support for the Notes® ClientThe Notes® client on Windows correctly scales text and icons when high resolution monitors or custom DPI settings are used. 
 This might seem like a minor fix, but for me it is great news. If you have shopped for Windows computers lately you may have noticed that many of the laptops now sport fantastically high screen resolutions. I recently bought (then regrettably returned) an HP Spectre laptop (aircraft carrier, really - it was BIG) with a 4000x3000 pixel display. Then I bought (and kept) a Microsoft Surface that has a 3000x2000 pixel screen. The problem I had with both of them was that IBM Notes, which is my bread-and-butter software, couldn't cope with such high resolution screens. Either the text would be so small that I needed a magnifying glass to read it or, if I tried to use Windows or Notes text resizing tools to enlarge the text, it would enlarge in unsatisfactory ways. For example, the text would be large enough to read, but the line height would not change, resulting in the tops of the letters being hidden and the whole exercise of reading the text very unsatisfactory.

I had found two workarounds for the situation. At first I simply reduced the screen resolution of my new laptop to an old-fashioned 2048x1024 (or less) so that I could read the content in my Notes windows. That worked fine. But it irritated me to have spent all that money and to be unable to use one of the nicest features of my new laptop. 

Later I noticed that, if I started my computer in high resolution mode with no external monitor attached, the text and icons in my Notes window would be properly sized and would look okay. But then if I attached an external monitor (my highest resolution one being 2048x1024) and moved the Notes window onto it, it would not resize properly. But then if I rebooted with the external monitor still attached, the Notes window, when reopened on that monitor, would display properly sized text and icons. But then if I moved the Notes window back onto the native monitor, the text in it would again be improperly sized. Or if I simply unplugged the external monitor, forcing the windows on it to move onto the native monitor, same result. But rebooting would again fix the text sizing issue.

In other words, my second workaround was to reboot the laptop (or, as I later discovered would also work, to simply log out of Windows, then log back in) whenever I wanted to connect to and use my external monitor or to disconnect from it. Doing so would fix the text in the Notes window. But it was a hassle to have to shut down and reopen the various programs I typically run every time I needed to connect my laptop to or disconnect it from my external monitor. All in all, a pretty unsatisfactory situation.

All that is fixed now with the happy release of Notes 9.0.1 Feature Pack 9. Now, if I unplug my external monitor, Notes repositions itself to the native monitor and resizes its text and icons exactly as it should. And if I plug the external monitor back in, Notes reverses the process exactly as it should - everything properly formatted and sized, all text easily readable. I am a very happy camper. 

1 comment:

  1. Hi Rob, great that FP9 fixed UHD screen issues for you. I wondered if you had any other tips, as I'm also running FP9 on a Spectre x360 (same build as you) but the icons are tiny (2-3mm across), though the text is at least readable now. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete