The Anniversary Update brings DPI scaling improvements

2 min. read

Published on August 23, 2016

published on August 23, 2016

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Prior to the Anniversary Update release, many Windows 10 users complained about DPI scaling issues which led to incorrect element rendering on high-resolution displays and blurry text. Microsoft acknowledged the issue, as traditional desktop applications were unable to handle display-scaling and, decided to optimize DPI scaling on high-DPI displays and multiple monitor setups.

The Windows 10 version 1607 brings with many DPI scaling improvements. First of all, the title bar, menus, buttons and other parts of the applications didn’t display correctly and it wasn’t the app developers’ fault. They did their job well and Windows 10 was supposed to display them correctly, which didn’t happen, and Microsoft had to take action. The Anniversary Update has fixed this problem and all app elements are now properly scaled.

The mixed-mode DPI scaling is another interesting feature brought by the Anniversary Update. It is a process that allows developers to specify a different scaling mode for each top-level window, so they can “focus their development time on making the important parts of their UI handle display scaling well, while letting Windows handle the other windows in the application.” The Anniversary Update gives developers the freedom to update their applications with a new UI that can do the scaling, or they can choose to let the OS handle the scaling.

Notepad has a primary window that automatically does the scaling, but the Print dialog is scaled by Windows. Microsoft has updated all its applications to scale better on high-DPI displays and the best example is Office. Even the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) framework has been improved in order to support the changes, and Microsoft will continue to roll out other upgrades in the future.

Thanks to these improvements, developers are now able to update and create applications that support dynamic scaling on high-DPI displays.

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Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time). For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web. Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they're looking for.