PDF XChange Forum

Good day ladies and gentlemen,
I am hereby officially requesting a size option for the toolbar.
As you can see in the attached screenshot what determines if an icon/shortcut in the toolbar is small or large is the space it is in, as you can see it gets a bit annoying when some are small and some are large, I'd rather have the option to choose which to be large and which to be large myself rather than having to reorganise the toolbar for the sizes to change.

To me it seems like there are only two different sizes anyway; large and small, is that right?

Hi MedBooster,

currently they should automagically" resize depending on the amount of real estate available for them:
I guess you are looking to manually set them rather than rely on the resize based on available space?

Yes it is nice of them to reduce based on available space, BUT I would still want an option to make certain icons stay small , no matter how much space is available, just to get some more consistency, so that you can basically control what will be small and what will be big, because as of now it seems quite random at times.

Hi Medbooster,

you get your wish this time.

The devs agreed, there is no ticket for this pre se as the task was already part of another, but from the "horse's mouth":

users will be able to force 'small' icons for toolbar even when space is enough.

I do not have an ETA for this but it will happen.

enjoy

here is a screenshot to demonstrate a scenario where it would be nice to have forced minimisation of icons; as you can see it doesn't really make sense to me that half of the icons are small while the others are large of the same mini-part of the toolbar

also, maybe an option to enable × 2 grids per column as opposed to × 3 would be nice, if possible.

Oh, I messed up,
I don't feel like it makes any sense how the first 3 icons are large and the rest are small in a group, why wouldn't all of them just be small? It is so inconsistent;

Hello MedBooster,

Thanks for your feedback! Indeed if you have the option to control the icon size - you would be able to set your UI up exactly as needed. As per Paul's post above - we will be working on improvements in this respect, but no ETA for the moment!

Kind regards,
Stefan

Hello

Has this been implemented yet in version 363? I can't find any icon size option

Hello, MedBooster

Not yet, no.. This is something which has been a "long term" request for a while now, I do not expect that it will be coming soon, though it is in progress.

Kind regards,

Too bad because it gets really messsy when you can't set the iocn size to small, because sometimes it is not really consistent even within the same group.

MedBooster,
by looking through the forums Tracker do generally take suggestions like this seriously. If they say it's in development, then I'm optimistic that it should be coming. But just not as the most urgent thing
—DIV

Well there is no ticket for this as mentioned earlier in the thread, it is something that is already in the works.

I've asked the team for an update on where things are with respect to this right now.

Hello,

Adding this for the record, a ticket was created on this topic just today:

RT#6245: FR: Force small icons in toolbars manually per tool/toolbar

Kind regards,

This completely slipped my mind, but it would likewise be useful to force large icons as well! (not just small)



Though I understand it may be difficult because at some point the icon has to get minimised so that the shortcuts can fit on the bar.... but maybe the ones more towards the right should be the first to "give up" and become small even though you forced them to be large.
I find it a bit weird that it is the first 3/6 of a group that are large and then the rest are small.

As a temporary solution I guess you could just put 3 and 3 each in a separate group to keep the icons large

Thanks Medbooster,

I've added your comments/suggestions to the ticket.

Any news on forcing a small icon size? (along with disabling text)

I'm pleasantly surprised by a lot of what I have suggested this year finally having come into fruition, but some things are sadly still missing...

Hello MedBooster,

I've asked in the ticket for an update for you.

Kind regards,
Stefan

Yes, this really should be a good feature, I'm wait fot a long time too. THX.

OK - so I raised the priority in the ticket also.

Be aware that while support can raise a ticket's priority that is an indication from our side that it is something that is being asked for, that does not override the development team's choices on what actually gets prioritized, there are often other factors at play that we in support are unaware of.

Ultimately when this gets delivered will be at the discretion of the dev team leader.

While we're waiting for a selective "force small icon" option....

If you're looking to fit more icons on your toolbar you could enable this:
(However, this does not allow icons to be stacked on top of each other – still better than nothing)



However, there's no shortcut which can toggle it on and off as far as I know

any news on this``? it would reaaallly help a lot with controlling what gets collapsed and what does not.
I think about it every day I use pdfxce

Hello, MedBooster

At the moment there is no update on the ticket since Stefan last checked in. It seems that it has been assigned a work item number, and in in que, but has not yet seen action.

Kind regards,

TrackerSupp-Daniel wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 11:07 pm Hello, MedBooster

At the moment there is no update on the ticket since Stefan last checked in. It seems that it has been assigned a work item number, and in in que, but has not yet seen action.

Kind regards,

?

Hello MedBooster,

Thanks for posting again in the topic - however I am afraid that there is still no further update that we can provide on this ticket!

Kind regards,
Stefan

This would be super useful for floating windows as well.

Thanks for the input, MedBooster.

We will consider it.

I would also like to request that you offer support for making icons even smaller.

I often use the program on MS Surface size tablet PCs and the menu area takes up a lot more vertical space than I would like.

It would be great if users could control the icons, making them arbitrarily small. I am familiar with the program menus, so making them very small does not disorient me.

Alternatively, you could give users control over the total vertical space used by the icon ribbon. For me personally, I would sometimes like to make the ribbon as small as 1/4" tall.

Alternatively, you could add a setting that completely hides the ribbon icons. Currently, one can hide the ribbon text, but hiding the icons would be more usable for me and save a ton of space.

Thanks!
Carl

PS - adding more user control of many other UI element sizes would also be great. E.g. bookmark font sizes - I want to make them really small sometimes.

Hello carl.andersen,

Have you tried this button at the top right corner of the Editor: It has three states and one of them is "Auto Hide" - so when you do not need the ribbon visible - it will be hidden for you.

Having arbitrary icon size is a bit tricky and not very practical - as icons are actually rendered for the specific size, and are not vector objects that can be scaled as needed - and resizing an icon to a size that has not been pre-rendered could mean a blurry icon which is not ideal.

Kind regards,
Stefan

carl.andersen wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 2:20 pm

Hello Carl,
➀
Right click on the toolbar → customize toolbars → commands
search for "switch to touch-optimized UI", it doesn't change the icon size, but it makes the distance between icons smaller.
➁
Maybe tweaking these "high DPI scaling behavior"-settings might help? (Prefereces → General → High DPI scaling behavior)

➂
https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/viewtopic ... &hilit=dpi
You can also check out my AutoHotKey script for changing DPI quickly. I just recently added a version with a GUI that you can use to change the DPI of multiple displays simultaneously (it switches the DPI within ~5 seconds granted you don't have DisplayFusion or other reskins that take long to load).


Anyway, I would support adding an "extra small icons"-option, if it is not already a thing?
Is it, Tracker Supp-Stefan?

Dimitar - Tracker Supp wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 1:03 pm Thanks for the input, MedBooster.

We will consider it.

And I don't mean to nag, but since the thread got a reply anyway... are there any updates?

Hello MedBooster,

Nothing new in the ticket at the moment I am afraid!

However for the time being - if you add a copy of a command (that is by default large) to another portion of the toolbar - that uses the small version of other icons - that one should also be added small: Kind regards,
Stefan

MedBooster wrote: ↑Thu Nov 09, 2023 10:32 am Anyway, I would support adding an "extra small icons"-option, if it is not already a thing?
Is it, Tracker Supp-Stefan?

Is it? As in an option in the settings to simply scale down the size by some fixed percentage? (though a custom scale would probably be ideal.. which would also change based on DPI changed)

Hello MedBooster,

Icons can not be freely scaled as they have to be pre-rendered as they are quite limited in the number of pixels available (especially the smaller icons) - so a 20x20 picels icon if not pre-rendered and scaled down from a say 64x64 pixels icon will most likely look blurry.

So while this is a simple request to make - it's implementation is quite more complicated internally.
For now we do not have "extra small icons" - and I do not really have anything new to add before the ticket gets some updates from our devs.

Kind regards,
Stefan

I am glad to see a post like this on the forum. I also have the same problem. I understand the need for better icon support in small icon settings. And I understand the amount of work that goes into re-creating icons on smaller scale.

However, there should be a beta feature to use the interface with smaller icons despite the blurriness. And/or the menu should list the commands without the icons.

Having come from an older version of PDF Xchange (v4), I relished the small icons. And I use that as my default. It was a mistake in the design of a compact interface, that icons at small scales were not planned.

Hello, anashashmi

I cannot offer anything of that ilk at this time, but I can increase the priority of the existing ticket:
RT#6245: FR: Force small icons in toolbars manually per tool/toolbar
Hopefully we can see this come along sooner now, but as before, I cannot make any promises.

Kind regards,

Any news?

Hello MedBooster,

No updates yet I am afraid.
The developer assigned to this ticket has been asked to check it and provide us with some, though I've not heard anything new yet.

Kind regards,
Stefan

I solved mine by doing this.

Thanks for that, smithloke

your screenshot is from the Viewer no the Editor, but the same should be possible in both. Here is is in the Editor:
I am keen to hear if that helps also.

Hello,

I am using Editor on a 4K screen @ 150% scaling. The Ribbon/Icons and UI fonts do scale up from the microscopic size @ 100% but they are still quite small. I have tried the Windows 11 DPI compatibility settings "System (Enhanced)" which does bring the UI to the correct size, but everything, including the PDF document I am viewing, is a little fuzzy. Removing the DPI compatibility settings makes for a much clearer document.
I have set Preferences > General > High DPI Support to "use per monitor resolution". This works great when swapping between screens with different scaling.

Is there anything I can do to scale up the icons (I don't mind if they have to be a little fuzzy) but keep the UI fonts and the document sharp?

Cheers!

Hello rhettw,

Please enable this mode, and se if it helps:


Regards.

Hello all,

I am seeing the same issue as @rhettw on certain laptops with medium high resolution screens.

Switching to touch mode (top image) only seems to change the icon spacing, but the icon size remains exactly the same as in classic/mouse mode (bottom image), at least for icons that are placed in the title bar.


I believe it would be a great solution if we could set the user interface DPI value similarly as is possible with the actual page display DPI:

User Interface DPI

Page Display DPI


Best regards,
David.P

Hello, David.P

Touch optimized mode isn't intended to increase the size of the icons themselves, just the clickable area to help prevent a mis-press. At this time, the scaling options available in our preferences are the only ones we offer for these cases, so if the output is still too small, I am not sure what else to offer.

On our end, testing with a few 4k monitors, as well as a 2k monitor, the output seems to be reasonably sized, and nearly identical to Ms Word. Could I perhaps ask for a fullscreen screenshot of how the UI appears on your higher DPI screens next to another app with proper scaling, both with files opened of course. (On your end, does MS Word get the scaling on this correct while ours does not)?

This should at least give us a more appropriate relative sense of the UI size on your end, so we can see what other changes could be made.

Kind regards,

Hello Dan,

sure, I will provide screenshots as soon as I am on that machine again.

It is a 16-inch laptop with 2560p display at, I believe, 175% scaling.

Hello, David.P

That lines up closely with one of the tablets I was testing on, at 2880x1920 (200% scaling). Without enabling touch optimized mode, our overall UI and icon size is slightly larger than MS Word, which is somewhat of a defacto standard for scaling comparisons.

Admittedly, reducing scaling down to 175% does cause the UI to be a smidge too small for my liking, but it is not dissimilar to the appearance of MS Word. For both applications, the solution there would be to increase the windows scaling, not for the application itself to change. As that could cause the already notably larger icons to be annoyingly large Lower resolution displays.

Kind regards,

TrackerSupp-Daniel wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 5:40 pm RT#6245: FR: Force small icons in toolbars manually per tool/toolbar

Force as in prioritise btw.
I still find it quite random... the first 3 icons in each group seem to be large, while the rest are small. I would rather customize large/small myself.

Hello MedBooster,

Your comment was added as a note to the ticket.

Regards.

While we're waiting...
Check out the explanations on hard-breaking vs. non-breaking in this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=62&t=39987

This also seems to affect icon size