Friday, January 31, 2003
Expanding Your Horizons: Nyditot Vitual Display v3.01 Review
Posted by Peter Traugot in "SOFTWARE" @ 02:30 PM
For those who want to take full advantage of screen real estate or simply want the flexibility to view, write, or navigate on their PDA in something other than the standard orientation, Nyditot’s Virtual Display has always been a good choice. Question is, does version 3.01's enhancements bring anything notable to the party? Keep reading to find out.
The current version of Virtual Display is 3.01 and brings many enhancements to the previous version. For those familiar with Virtual Display, I’ll talk about the changes down the page. For those not familiar, here’s what the program is all about...
Pick a size, any size
Figure 1: Above are the programs placed into the NVD folder when the program installs.
Virtual Display, hence fourth referred to as VD, has four applications. The primary application is called “VD Settings”. This is the core of the program. This is where you set the size of your display. Now we all know that the “physical” resolution of the Pocket PC display is 240x320, however, what VD does is create a larger, “virtual” screen that you can scroll around in. What this amounts to is a larger screen for typing, drawing, viewing spreadsheets, etc. There really is no limit to the size of the display; however, the author does suggest not going beyond 1024x1024. Now that’s a LOT of real estate!
Figure 1: Above is the main interface for NVD. The presets are at the top, followed by orientation and additional settings.
The program supplies a number of preset configurations, or, you can type in your own numbers for both horizontal and vertical sizes. Beneath the presets is the default orientation radio buttons. With these, you can set the default orientation of the screen. Below the buttons are the two fields to enter a custom screen size and below these are a number of check boxes. The first box, called “Fit to Display”, forces the display to scale to the set resolution. For example, if you have your screen set to 480x640, the resulting screen will be scaled to allow a full 480x640 worth of information to be viewable on the screen all at once. This is a great feature if you’re working on a spreadsheet and want to be able to see more information without having to scroll around the screen. Second is the “Resize Desktop” box. This is a new feature in 3.2 and is invaluable! However, I’ll hold off on discussing this feature until I talk about all the new features. Next is “Pan with Arrows”. This allows you to use the directional pad on your device to scroll the display. This is a handy feature as long as you’re not using it for another application as conflicts can occur. Next is “Hide Onscreen Control”. This basically hides the navigation and menu cluster from the display. And lastly, “Preserve After Reset”. This feature should ONLY be used once you’ve fully tested your settings and are FULLY confident that the system won’t get whacked because of conflicts, poor resolution settings, etc. Once this is set, even a soft reset won’t disable the program (as is the default behavior.). One last item in the screen is the “Darken Text” entry. This allows you to darken the screen text by some percentage. This is handy if you find that the scaling feature of the application lightens your text and you find it hard to read. I’ve discovered that this is a fairly device dependant adjustment.
Once you have set up your preferences, the unit will likely need to be reset in order to change the display buffer size. This is required on all devices because the Pocket PC hardware can only adjust the physical display size at boot up.
Getting Around
When your system comes back up, you’ll notice a small orange button on your desktop. This is the settings control for VD. Around this button are eight arrows. The four arrows closest to the orange button are “scroll” arrows. Pressing and holding one of these down will scroll the display in that direction. The arrows pointing to the four corners of the display are “jump” arrows. Pressing one of these buttons immediately pops the screen to the far edge of the direction pressed; great for quick hops around a large display. Pressing the orange button brings up a menu of additional operations. On the top of the menu are the orientation icons. Clicking on one of these icons immediately rotates the display. Below these are three options; “Fit to Display”, “Resize Desktop”, and “Hide control”. These are the same functions as found in the setup. Lastly are the menu options for the VD Settings program and help.
Three other stand-alone programs reside within the Virtual Display folder. They are; “VD Menu” (forces the on-screen menu to appear if you have disabled it, “VD Power” (Toggles the units power off), and “VD Zoom (Toggles the “fit to screen” option back and forth.).
What's New?
Figure 3: The new features include tha ability to set custom color schemes.
One of the biggest requests from users of previous versions of VD was the ability to rotate the display from portrait to landscape without having to reset the device, yet have the information on the screen not bleed off the edge of the screen. In other words, when you set the screen to 320x320 (square) and set the display to portrait, the additional 80 pixels worth of information would bleed of the edge and you would have to either scale or scroll to get to the additional screen real estate. What “Fit to display” does, is fool the display buffer into thinking the screen resolution is still 240x320. That means that the screen will look correct in both portrait and landscape. The trick isn’t foolproof however. If the application doesn’t test for resolution changes, it won’t work on the fly. However, generally speaking, if you quick the application in question and re-launch it, it will recognize the setting and format appropriately. I have found this one feature to be completely worth the upgrade price!
In addition to this nifty feature is the ability to customize the system colors of the desktop. Other stand-alone programs exist to do this, but VD incorporates it into the settings application so that you can have multiple setups with different color schemes.
Gotchas
Is VD 100% foolproof? No. However, this has nothing to do with this superbly implemented suite of tools, but rather, limitations of the Pocket PC OS. Nyditot has done an excellent job of building a display system that was never meant to exist in the Pocket PC hardware. In my opinion, they have exceeded expectations.
Where to Buy
Nyditot Virtual Display ver. 3.01 can be downloaded from Handango as a free trial version, or purchased for $19.95 (affiliate).
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking to flex the visual capabilities of your Windows CE hardware, look no further: Nyditot’s Virtual Display v3.01 is it!
The current version of Virtual Display is 3.01 and brings many enhancements to the previous version. For those familiar with Virtual Display, I’ll talk about the changes down the page. For those not familiar, here’s what the program is all about...
Pick a size, any size
Figure 1: Above are the programs placed into the NVD folder when the program installs.
Virtual Display, hence fourth referred to as VD, has four applications. The primary application is called “VD Settings”. This is the core of the program. This is where you set the size of your display. Now we all know that the “physical” resolution of the Pocket PC display is 240x320, however, what VD does is create a larger, “virtual” screen that you can scroll around in. What this amounts to is a larger screen for typing, drawing, viewing spreadsheets, etc. There really is no limit to the size of the display; however, the author does suggest not going beyond 1024x1024. Now that’s a LOT of real estate!
Figure 1: Above is the main interface for NVD. The presets are at the top, followed by orientation and additional settings.
The program supplies a number of preset configurations, or, you can type in your own numbers for both horizontal and vertical sizes. Beneath the presets is the default orientation radio buttons. With these, you can set the default orientation of the screen. Below the buttons are the two fields to enter a custom screen size and below these are a number of check boxes. The first box, called “Fit to Display”, forces the display to scale to the set resolution. For example, if you have your screen set to 480x640, the resulting screen will be scaled to allow a full 480x640 worth of information to be viewable on the screen all at once. This is a great feature if you’re working on a spreadsheet and want to be able to see more information without having to scroll around the screen. Second is the “Resize Desktop” box. This is a new feature in 3.2 and is invaluable! However, I’ll hold off on discussing this feature until I talk about all the new features. Next is “Pan with Arrows”. This allows you to use the directional pad on your device to scroll the display. This is a handy feature as long as you’re not using it for another application as conflicts can occur. Next is “Hide Onscreen Control”. This basically hides the navigation and menu cluster from the display. And lastly, “Preserve After Reset”. This feature should ONLY be used once you’ve fully tested your settings and are FULLY confident that the system won’t get whacked because of conflicts, poor resolution settings, etc. Once this is set, even a soft reset won’t disable the program (as is the default behavior.). One last item in the screen is the “Darken Text” entry. This allows you to darken the screen text by some percentage. This is handy if you find that the scaling feature of the application lightens your text and you find it hard to read. I’ve discovered that this is a fairly device dependant adjustment.
Once you have set up your preferences, the unit will likely need to be reset in order to change the display buffer size. This is required on all devices because the Pocket PC hardware can only adjust the physical display size at boot up.
Getting Around
When your system comes back up, you’ll notice a small orange button on your desktop. This is the settings control for VD. Around this button are eight arrows. The four arrows closest to the orange button are “scroll” arrows. Pressing and holding one of these down will scroll the display in that direction. The arrows pointing to the four corners of the display are “jump” arrows. Pressing one of these buttons immediately pops the screen to the far edge of the direction pressed; great for quick hops around a large display. Pressing the orange button brings up a menu of additional operations. On the top of the menu are the orientation icons. Clicking on one of these icons immediately rotates the display. Below these are three options; “Fit to Display”, “Resize Desktop”, and “Hide control”. These are the same functions as found in the setup. Lastly are the menu options for the VD Settings program and help.
Three other stand-alone programs reside within the Virtual Display folder. They are; “VD Menu” (forces the on-screen menu to appear if you have disabled it, “VD Power” (Toggles the units power off), and “VD Zoom (Toggles the “fit to screen” option back and forth.).
What's New?
Figure 3: The new features include tha ability to set custom color schemes.
One of the biggest requests from users of previous versions of VD was the ability to rotate the display from portrait to landscape without having to reset the device, yet have the information on the screen not bleed off the edge of the screen. In other words, when you set the screen to 320x320 (square) and set the display to portrait, the additional 80 pixels worth of information would bleed of the edge and you would have to either scale or scroll to get to the additional screen real estate. What “Fit to display” does, is fool the display buffer into thinking the screen resolution is still 240x320. That means that the screen will look correct in both portrait and landscape. The trick isn’t foolproof however. If the application doesn’t test for resolution changes, it won’t work on the fly. However, generally speaking, if you quick the application in question and re-launch it, it will recognize the setting and format appropriately. I have found this one feature to be completely worth the upgrade price!
In addition to this nifty feature is the ability to customize the system colors of the desktop. Other stand-alone programs exist to do this, but VD incorporates it into the settings application so that you can have multiple setups with different color schemes.
Gotchas
Is VD 100% foolproof? No. However, this has nothing to do with this superbly implemented suite of tools, but rather, limitations of the Pocket PC OS. Nyditot has done an excellent job of building a display system that was never meant to exist in the Pocket PC hardware. In my opinion, they have exceeded expectations.
Where to Buy
Nyditot Virtual Display ver. 3.01 can be downloaded from Handango as a free trial version, or purchased for $19.95 (affiliate).
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking to flex the visual capabilities of your Windows CE hardware, look no further: Nyditot’s Virtual Display v3.01 is it!
