Comments on: Windows 7 Tip — Make Scroll Bars, Windows Controls Bigger for Touch

By: Pete Wood

Pete Wood — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:18:44 +0000

Hi James – I agree with Kevin – you can increase the size of the buttons and scroll bar using native windows 7 functionality! Check this post to work through the layers of configuration…

http://voato.com/tech/windows/increase-the-button-size-on-windows-7-tablet-pcs

By: Benjamin Healey

Benjamin Healey — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 08:28:14 +0000

I had issues installing Origami Pack 2.0 on Windows 7. The installer I downloaded today wouldn’t let me proceed, because I wasn’t running ‘Vista on a UMPC’. Solution: Use UniExtract (or anything else, command line works too) to get the files out of the .msi installer. Run them separately, or copy them to program files and make your own shortcuts.
The Origami Pack is great! Kevin makes another great point (below this post). You may even want to add a few more pixels to the scroll bars, menus or title bars. Happy tweaking!

By: bluespapa

bluespapa — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:13:07 +0000

Wholly cow! I spent a couple of days looking for this! Indeed I changed color, but couldn't believe that they'd cut these options from W7 just to trim the size of the operating system! How did it slip past me? Life can be good! Kevin, when you first showed how to do this on XP Tablet, it was one of the most functional customizations I'd encountered! Thank heavens for archives, because I missed this the first time. Way to go, guys!

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:14:49 +0000

Is there any way either through personalization (manually setting the title bar/scroll bar settings)or through origami experience to apply the optimized settings when in tablet mode and use non optimized settings when in laptop mode. I use a convertible tablet and would like to have a separate set of settings for each mode and even a different set depending on portrait or landscape modes.

By: Faisal

Faisal — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:12:41 +0000

Plz help friends…

I can’t open personalisation in windows 7.
It saya “This page is not available in this edition of windows”

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:27:41 +0000

Kevin is definitely right. you can change sizes for the title bar and scroll bars and some other things using that dialog. i used this in vista to make the scroll bars fatter and easier to hit with me pen.

one nice thing is that you can reduce the stupid fat “border” of aero glass around your windows, to slim them down. adjust the “border padding” item in the dialog box Kevin mentioned.

By: Darwin

Darwin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:17:00 +0000

UPMC’s failed the first time. What is different now?

By: DaveTN

DaveTN — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:12:03 +0000

Hmmm…Been doing this on my Q1u-EL with win7 since I first installed the beta. Thought more people knew about it. Also works on my HP TX2500z quite well.

As a side note, I got the HP Touchsmart software working (albeit slowly) on the TX2500z.

Hey GoodThings2Life….same person on PPCGeeks? If so, THANKS for all your help. You have some great posts there! :-)

David

By: James Kendrick

James Kendrick — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:58:30 +0000

I’ll have to play with it. It’s not working for me on two different Win7 devices, the only ones I have to play with. The buttons stay the same height. Maybe OE is interfering, although I can turn it off fine and go back to normal.

I can make them bigger in the Advanced Appearance, but they stay the same height. This on both Aero and non-Aero.

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:45:49 +0000

Just had a thought: your currently selected theme might require you hit the Advanced Appearance Settings in the Window Color dialog… it definitely works. My buttons are about an inch big right now! Ugh… must… reduce…. size….

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:39:05 +0000

It’s working fine for me on the Toshiba netbook. I can make them bigger by increasing the size of either the titlebar or the buttons with no prob. Have you tried it on a Win 7 device that doesn’t have the OE software? Maybe that’s causing a problem.

By: James Kendrick

James Kendrick — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:32:40 +0000

Can anyone show how to make the window Min/Max/Close button bigger in Win7 using the Personalize settings? I’ve not been able to make that happen, the main reason I liked this OE method.

Having these buttons bigger is great when windows are maximized. They’re impossible to hit in the upper right-hand corner otherwise.

By: GoodThings2Life

GoodThings2Life — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:49:14 +0000

Definitely a bad implementation by MS, but mostly because this classic dialog has never been very intuitive nor is it very accessible/discoverable in the first place.

Still, some enterprising developer could easily write a new GUI to customize these settings outside of the dialog, since it’s just a series of registry edits in HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelAppearance.

I’m not a developer, so no GUI design by me, but if one of you exports that key (and subkeys) to a reg file and emailed it to me, I could prep a reg file with just those modifications (excluding all the fluff).

By: James Kendrick

James Kendrick — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:01:17 +0000

Ah, I have tried the button resizing which does nothing. I’ll try the title bar resizing. Bad implementation by MS here. Why have a button resize setting if it doesn’t resize them? :)

By: Jake

Jake — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:01:15 +0000

Also, increasing the dpi will increase the size of toolbar buttons as well as the min/max/close buttons. It also increases the size of text which should help with finger-based selection.

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:57:15 +0000

Sure it does. When you increase the size of the titlebar, the max/min/close buttons increase by default. OE isn’t adding any functionality to Windows 7 here — anything you can do with OE in terms of resizing controls can be done natively in Windows 7. This is how we did it before OE and it can still be done this way after OE. ;)