Page 298 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

to dial up a particular number of pixels.

Your screen can make its picture larger or smaller to accommodate different

kinds of work. You perform this magnification or reduction by switching
among different resolutions (measurements of the number of dots that
compose the screen). To do that, use the Resolution drop-down menu.

Fixing blurriness

As you make scaling or resolution changes, keep in mind two cautions.
First, choosing a lower resolution means that text and graphics will be

bigger on your screen, but you’ll see less area. It’s exactly as though you’ve
enlarged a document on a photocopier.

Second, on a flat-panel screen—that is, the only kind sold today—only one

resolution setting looks really great: the maximum one. That’s what geeks
call the native resolution of that screen. At other resolutions, the PC does
what it can to blur together adjacent pixels, but the effect can be fuzzy and
unsatisfying. (On the old, bulky CRT monitors, the electron gun could

actually make the pixels larger or smaller, so we didn’t have this problem.)

Windows has built-in technology that tries to minimize the blurring; in the
May 2019 Update, it’s turned on automatically, at least for the main

monitor. (The on/off switch appears when you select “Advanced scaling
options” on the → → System → Display screen.)

Unfortunately, some apps still don’t respond to Windows’s anti-blurring
technology. Sometimes, even restarting them isn’t enough to make them
respect the new resolution you’ve dialed up; you have to sign out of the PC

and back in again. That’s why the Display Settings box offers a “Turn off
custom scaling and sign out” link here, too.

The Magnifier

If your “type is too small” problem is only occasional, you can call up

Windows’ Magnifier. It’s like a software magnifying glass that fills the top
portion of your screen; as you move your pointer around the real-size area
beneath, the enlarged image scrolls around, too. Details are on “Magnifier”.