I am developing a Windows Forms application using VS2008 on Windows Vista. I tried to run my application on Windows XP the other day, and everything on GUI was messed up. I realized that I developed the application using 120 Dpi setting on Windows Vista and my XP was set to 96 dpi.
My application has several UserControls and all of them shrinks even in the Visual Studio itself if I change my DPI to 96. I am sure a lot of people are using Visual Studio in high DPIs these days. So how can make sure that my GUI does not get messed up both in Visual Studio and runtime?
EDIT: I have read couple articles on this issue and I learned that I should be setting AutoScaleMode to None. However, this still does not prevent my labels to adapt new DPI settings enforced by the operating system. I need a way to prevent my labels to grow/shrink because other GUI elements have fix sizes.
It has been a while since I worked on this issue, but try setting AutoSize = False. In addition, UseCompatibleTextRendering = True might help.
This is a rather old question, but I want to share my solution/opinion. I ran into a similar problem recently. Actually, I want Visual Studio to keep my WinForms as they are, but them to scale at runtime. I found no consistent summary on how to correctly do that. After some reading and experimenting I came to this solution:
- Keep the Form’s
AutoScaleMode = Font.
- Set in your Forms Designer:
Font = MS Sans; 11px
- In the Forms Ctor, after
InitializeComponent, set: Font = SystemFonts.DefaultFont
- Enable DPI-Awareness, either through a manifest or by API function
SetProcessDPIAwareness
Since AutoScaleMode remains active, all DPI-changing magic works, even per-monitor DPI awareness. What remains, is designing Forms in a way scaling works nicely.
I wrote the details on my Blog: http://www.sgrottel.de/?p=1581&lang=en
