Windows 7 Tip — Make Scroll Bars, Windows Controls Bigger for Touch
I am having a good time running Windows 7 on a number of devices, but one of the things I miss from previous versions of Windows is how to optimize the interface for the small screen. I have been struggling in Windows 7, on touch-enabled devices in particular, due to the inability to make the scroll bars and other windows controls bigger. The min/max/close boxes on windows are just too tiny to tap with my finger on touch devices, and the scroll bars need to be wider to be useful. While surfing around the web this past weekend I stumbled across a free method to make these controls work much better with touch.
Seamonkey420, a frequent visitor to our site, points out that the Origami Experience 2.0 (OE) from Microsoft can change certain aspects of the Windows interface to have larger controls to make them easier to use by touch. The OE was the failed attempt to turn touch-enabled UMPCs into devices that could be run entirely by touch. This was accomplished by replacing the tiny interface controls in Windows with nice, big finger-friendly ones. OE never took off for a number of reasons, but chief among them was the fact that it was produced to only run on Vista.
UMPC devices as a rule haven’t run Vista well in the past, and most of them currently ship with XP. OE will not run on XP so it was largely ignored by UMPC users. Seamonkey discovered that while OE was developed to run on Vista, it can also run on Windows 7. He produced a nice tutorial for getting it running on Win 7 systems, and since OE is a free download it was a no-brainer for me to give it a go on the ThinkPad x200 touch tablet I am testing.
The first step was to download and install OE. The program warned me that it was only intended to run with Vista but I ignored those messages. It installed without a hitch and then rebooted the system. When the system rebooted it gave a couple of error messages as programs OE installed in the Startup folder tried to launch, but couldn’t run under Windows 7. This was not a problem as I didn’t want to run OE proper, just get at the Touch Settings utility in the Start Menu under OE.
The Touch Settings utility gives a nice interface for “optimizing” different interface controls, such as Start Menu, Scroll Bars and Internet Explorer. You can tick only the features you want optimized, which largely means OE will make them bigger. I opted to only make the scroll bars and title bar bigger, as those were the parts of the interface giving me the most trouble in Win 7 with touch.
Once the settings were changed, it prompted for a log off and log on to enact them. Upon log in the title bar controls and scroll bars were bigger and easier to use, natively in the OS. This is important, because everywhere a scroll bar appears it is now nice and wide. All windows have an easier-to-use title bar, everywhere in Windows 7. This is a tremendous boon to use by touch, and has made a big difference in usability.
I did have to go to the Start Menu and delete two programs that OE installed there, those were the ones giving me the error upon boot. I find the x200 to be much better to use by touch, and I am going right now to install this on the Viliv S5 UMPC. That 5-inch screen is just screaming for bigger controls.
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- Touch settings
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- Windows 7 Normal Window
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- Big buttons, scroll bars
Definitely a great tip by Seamonkey420! If folks don’t want to install the Origami Experience, you can still mod the scrollbar properties in Windows 7 natively.
Hit up Control Panel / Appearance and Personalization / Personalization / Window Color. You’ll see the ages old dialog box where you can customize each aspect of your windows. Tap the scrollbar in the dialog, for example, and you can set the size in terms of pixels.
Good point but the Win7 method described does not make the Min/Max/close buttons bigger, the OE method does.
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.
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.
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?
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_USER\Control Panel\Appearance.
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).
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.
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.
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….
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.
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
UPMC’s failed the first time. What is different now?
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.
Plz help friends…
I can’t open personalisation in windows 7.
It saya “This page is not available in this edition of windows”