Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

VictorTango777

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 28, 2017
894
1,634
New monitors are gaining larger screens and higher resolution all the time. But it seems that some application developers are still stuck in the 1990’s. Examples:

BBEdit: Window toolbar and bottom status bar have tiny buttons and text which are difficult to see and read.

Pixelmator: Tool palettes contain very tiny text which is painful to read on modern high resolution monitors. The tiny icons and buttons in the palettes are difficult to see clearly.

What is the reason for developers not making their user interfaces suitable for today’s high resolution monitors? Is it:
1. These developers only use low resolution monitors so they think their applications look fine for everyone?
2. They are aware of the issue but they don’t care?

My monitor is a 38 inch, 3840x1600 ultrawide. Even if I set it to a lower resolution (3200x1333) these application UI’s still appear tiny.
 
Last edited:
I like BBEdit just fine. The UI elements are the size of the text characters. If you can click between two characters, then you can click a UI element.
BBEdit has a text Zoom In command but it doesn't change the UI element sizes so maybe they need a Zoom In for that.

If 3200x1333 is not low enough then go lower? Any HiDPI mode starting from 1920x800 should be good. I guess that would make other UI elements too big.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.