Is the only thing holding you back from entering the world of Glass the fact that you can’t decide which color best brings out your eyes? Worry no more. Google’s fixed the problem by sending potential Explorers all four colors of Glass’ Titanium Collection
It’s not news that the Chrome support for high DPI (hiDPI) has been a work in progress for some time, and within the past year or so, the proliferation of high DPI displays on laptops has made the need for good high dpi support even more important. I have messed with a few beta features before, and some of them ended up making Chrome completely unusable.
I mostly tolerated the lack of high DPI on 13.3” laptop screens, but now that I work with a 32” 4K desktop display, I can no longer use Chrome without true high DPI support. Unfortunately, the old tricks won’t work anymore, but fret not there is a solution that does.
For this tutorial, I have used:
In the past, you could go to the Chrome settings and enable hiDPI from there. Here were the steps, which now no longer work:
First of all, it may have worked at some point, but a lot of people got burned out when Chrome turned into a garbled mess which was unreadable. The solution was to go back and fix this by following the same steps, but “blind”. I did it, it wasn’t fun, and re-installing Chrome didn’t solve it since the settings were apparently left in Windows after the uninstall. This option was removed around March 13 2014.
You may also find a second proposition which consists in adding command-line arguments to the Chrome app shortcut to enable HiDPI. They look like this:
–high-dpi-support=1
–force-device-scale-factor=2
There are TWO hyphens, and unfortunately, neither combinations work with the latest builds.
The Chrome product support page is not really of much help, but fortunately a friend of mine pointed out that this was an active issue that was being tracked in by the Chromium development community.
I headed there and found updated information including a fix that actually works on my system and that I expect to work on most systems.
The most recent version of Chrome toggles the hiDPI support based on a Windows Registry value. This is why the old tricks don’t work any more.
I know that’s it is a pain to edit the registry files, but fortunately, some handy little files are already available on the Chromium site. Fair warning: this is not something that Google officially supports, and you run registry commands from an unknown source at your own peril.
Thanks for Eugene Girard for uploading them to the Chrome Google Groups, and to Alex Sorokoletov for fixing an encoding issues on the original scripts.
The good thing with these, is that even if Chrome became or garbled, you could disable hiDPI support without going in blind and angry.
Additional Note
By default, Chrome is launched by Windows with some old display scaling on hi DPI displays. This is what makes the fonts blurry to start with. Even if you don’t enable Chrome’s built-in hiDPI settings, running Chrome with “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” will help make the HTML text not blurry — although they may appear very small. This doesn’t solve the hiDPI issue, but it does help somewhat if you can tolerate using a 100% scale (no scaling).
I’m glad to report that the steps above helped me setup Chrome with my hiDPI display. However, I have noticed that the Chrome window now sometime refuses to be moved and/or resized for some period of time.
If I wait long enough, the freeze magically go away, but this is something that I had never experienced before switching to high DPI mode. In the meanwhile, all HTML functions still work properly and you can read/browse the content.
Keep in mind that hiDPI is still very much under development, so things may change and be unstable until this feature is officially rolled out. If that is of interest, you can follow the code issue tracking #149881.
Finally, even after getting this to work, I noticed that hiDPI support was still better on both IE and Firefox, so if all else fails, you can still fallback on these.
Follow these steps at your own risk. It worked fine for me, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test them on other systems. I hope that it helps you enjoy your new hiDPI display.
If it doesn’t work, or if you have additional questions, drop a comment, and I will help if I can. If not, maybe someone else in the community can pitch in. If a few can pitch in a little, everyone’s computing experience will improve.
Chrome High DPI: How To Enable It In Windows 8, 8.1 (v34+)
, original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Computers, 4k, chrome, Google, Windows,
Google’s Chromecast has gained another service, with the streaming media dongle now adding live MLB.TV support for baseball games. As with other Chromecast integration we’ve seen, the functionality relies on … Continue reading
Google’s new standalone Camera app
When Google acquired smart thermostat maker Nest for $3.2 billion, the startup quickly stated that it would never share its user data with other Google services and outside companies. But according to a recent report by Forbes, the company is taking advantage of its data to create a lucrative revenue stream from electric utilities. “Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer… Read More
Google unveiled its slick Project Tango 3D mapping system inside a prototype smartphone not long ago. We got to see what all the camera lenses inside the Project Tango smartphone … Continue reading
We have heard about Google’s Project Loon before, where this initiative intends to bring Internet connectivity to the masses using air balloons that float up high in the sky. It takes less than a month to make its way across the world, and has the potential to deliver up to 10Mbps speeds for users. It seems that these high-flying Wi-Fi balloons could also be testing out 4G LTE connectivity as they make their way on top of the Nevada desert.
So far, Google has already testing out its Project Loon Wi-Fi balloons in New Zealand, and hence it is not surprising at all to see that tests are also been conducted secretly right there and then in their very own country. So far, Google has picked up permission from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in order to test out its Project Loon balloons in the northern Nevada desert.
In such tests, Google too, could be making an assessment as to whether it is able to tap into licensed radio spectrum to broadcast Wi-Fi. At this point in time, Project Loon has made use of the unlicensed 2.4GHz band for its Wi-Fi testing, where they are now also testing out a couple of radio spectrum types as depicted in the FCC filings, citing a broad class signal which could point to the possibility of 4G LTE.
Project Loon Tests LTE In Nevada (Rumor) , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Computers, Google, project loon,
Chromebooks are simple devices, and if a yet-unfinished feature that has surfaced ever comes to fruition, they could get even simpler. “Easy Unlock” is a feature that unlocks a user’s … Continue reading
Google’s Project Ara is a pretty unique and interesting concept. The idea is to allow users to continuously upgrade their phones and swap out parts to create the phone of their dreams. For example right now we are pretty much limited in terms of customizability. For example you might like this phone’s design, but its camera is somewhat lacking, or you like a set of features from a particular brand but feel that its hardware could be better, and so on.
Those are the kind of problems that Project Ara wants to address, but at the same time could Project Ara be applied to wearable technology as well? It turns out that Toshiba might have thought of something like that. During the Ara Developer Conference, Toshiba’s Senior VP and Technology Executive, Shardul Kazi, took to the stage where he revealed a concept in which Ara’s modular components could be taken out of the smartphone and inserted into a wearable device.
For example if you wanted to use your smartwatch to play music, you could take out the storage unit from the smartphone and plug it into your watch and allow it to access the data on it. You could even swap out sensors, like accelerometers, gyroscopes, or maybe even health-related sensors like heart rate sensors and so on, depending on your needs.
However this is only a concept at the moment, as pointed out by Kazi. He also stated that nothing of the sort was in development right now, but it’s still a very interesting idea and it certainly does open the door to all sorts of possibilities. Of course the first step would to actually release the Ara smartphone first, which Google estimates to be in January 2015, but in the meantime what do you guys think of this idea?
Toshiba Shows How Project Ara’s Modularity Can Be Applied To Wearables , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Cellphones, Google, project ara, Toshiba,
It can be hard to find good smack without leaving the comfort of your own home. At least it used to be. A new search engine for black markets is making it easier than ever to find anything from high quality heroin to assault rifles. The site even looks just like Google. It’s called Grams, and it works remarkably well.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
