224040 - "About Junk Mail" Undersized dialog on Windows XP with high resolution

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Christophe Jacquet]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031013 Thunderbird/0.3

Some dialogs are undersized in Thunderbird on Windows XP when using high dpi
resolution (and quite big fonts): for instance, the "Account Wizard" has a
scrollbar, and on the "About Junk Mail" window buttons are not visible.

See http://jacquetc.free.fr/mozilla/bug2/ for some screenshots.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. In Windows' Display Preferences, set up a display resolution at 120dpi
2. Run Mozilla Thunderbird
Actual Results:  
Some windows are undersized so their content does not fit in. Then, either they
get scrollbars, or part of their content is hidden.

Expected Results:  
Windows should be large enough at all resolutions.

Comment 1

[Stephen Walker]

Thunderbird uses the same dialogs as Seamonkey for these items and I believe
there are already bugs filed about this on mailnews.

Comment 2

[Fabian Rodriguez:MagicFab]

Version: Thunderbird 0.9 release (20041103), french & english
OS: Windows XP Home, us-EN

Confirming this behavior for account wizard when asking for server addresses,
there are scrollbars and the window can't be resized. This happened on default
installs for the last 25 no-brand desktops I have tried it on and 1 laptop with
WXGA. 

Embarassing, at this point in time :) I see this frequently as I include
detailed training on how to install TB in my security courses.

Comment 3

[Eduardo Elgueta]

Thundirbird doesn't respect the font size set by the user. In my high
resolution, small notebook screen I use 105 dpi to see more clearly, but
Thundirbird fonts (menus and dialogs) are still very small.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

changed to be specific (as bugs should be) to junk-only because account wizard is gone

Comment 6

[:aceman]

Windows XP is no longer supported. Can you reproduce the problem also on newer Windows versions?

Comment 7

[L A Walsh]

@aceman -- Unless the dialog is sized using device-independent size units (some html renderers support physical sizes like cm/inches or even points).  It's when it is sized in pixels that it is a problem in HTML4 (and before).  HTML5 redefined the 'pixel' to be a fixed physical size, but it depends on how the dialog is displayed.  I.e. on windows  -- at least in Win7, you can resize your screen text using a full-screen resize, or using an XP-style resize that only resizes the text.  It is _preferable_ from a speed & readability standpoint to use the XP-style resize, since the full-screen resize introduces blur and is a bit slower (likely more noticeable on a slower machine).

Anyway -- the fact it was found on XP is not real important, since Wayne Mery changed it to "all OS's" 7 years ago.

Part of the problem in TB & FF was that they ignored the DPI settings.

I found a setting that does have an effect, but it may not be in older apps:

layout.css.devPixelsPerPx

Default = 1.0, setting it to higher numbers like 1.15 will enlarge everything.  It doesn't seem to 
cause a performance hit or blurriness like the similar setting in MS-Win.

I wonder if the original reporter is still around even (14 years later!)... hmmm...

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Magnus, do you know where "About Junk Mail" would be? Does it even still exist?

Comment 9

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] (away, back June 30)]

There used to be an info dialog ages ago.