How to adjust size of minimize maximize close buttons

I was able to adjust (make bigger) the size of these buttons using REGEDIT. It worked for Internet Explorer, Control Panel, and Regedit. Strangely, those settings do not control the MMC buttons in Microsoft Office applications. Does anyone know how to adjust these buttons in Office?

Office, since probably at least Office 2000, has always been a testing ground for new UI concepts for Microsoft. Office 2000 introduced a "flat" style that was all the rage for a time, then Office 2007 saw the dawn of the Ribbon UI. Over on the Mac side you saw the formatting pallet, which is sort of like an early predecessor to the Ribbon UI in the v.X and 2004 versions.

So every Office version will require its own set of hacks to do things like you want. Office GUI controls don't necessarily correspond to the Windows GUI controls. That goes double for VBA userforms, which are an offshoot of VB6 controls. The newer ActiveX controls you can use in other parts of Office don't apply to VBA userforms sadly.

thank you

What about Min/Max/Close Buttons on Windows 8.1? I wanted to know how to reduce the width of the close buttons. I already made another thread on this, but it keeps getting passed by (and someone who makes themes has to know what I can use to edit the resource.)

Jody Thornton said:

What about Min/Max/Close Buttons on Windows 8.1? I wanted to know how to reduce the width of the close buttons. I already made another thread on this, but it keeps getting passed by (and someone who makes themes has to know what I can use to edit the resource.)

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Size of font in the Title bar will also reduce or make buttons larger.

The images in the Close, Minimize, and Maximize buttons are actually characters in a special system font designed for the purpose. Normally this font is scaled to fit the height of the Title bar. I believe this has been the case since the early days of Windows. I am not aware of any method whereby the user can override this. If they wish applications can override all of this and draw the entire caption bar themselves. Most do not.

The technology for scaling fonts has been around for a long time and it works well. Scaling of actual images like bitmaps often does not produce good results.

Edit: You really don't want to be modifying system fonts.

LMiller7 said:

The images in the Close, Minimize, and Maximize buttons are actually characters in a special system font designed for the purpose. .... You really don't want to be modifying system fonts.

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Fonts and character sizes I'm OK with. The attached image should demonstrate what I'm after (I hope...lol)




PS. I attempted working with Windows Style Builder, but it can't seem to apply the theme (sniff...)

caption width

Jody: As I said at the start of this thread, I was successful in increasing the height of the MMC buttons using regedit. This adjustment works in most windows EXCEPT MS Office. I did not care about the width of the buttons.

However, in the system registry, regedit, in the same setting area I used for height, is a setting for CAPTIONWIDTH. I suspect you can reduce the width of the all three buttons using that setting, excluding Office.

RD

LMiller7 said:

The technology for scaling fonts has been around for a long time and it works well. Scaling of actual images like bitmaps often does not produce good results.

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You can scale bitmap images DOWN just fine, it's when you want to try and scale them UP that you're going to start to see the limitations of the format. Forget where it was I heard this, but apparently the guy credited with creating the pixel was of the mind that the square was the worst possible shape to use. So naturally that's what we've been stuck with ever since.

rdorrance said:

However, in the system registry, regedit, in the same setting area I used for height, is a setting for CAPTIONWIDTH. I suspect you can reduce the width of the all three buttons using that setting, excluding Office.

RD

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I was asleep apparently (you know when you read what you want to see? LOL) Thanks for the heads up, which means I have homework tonight.

rdorrance said:

I was able to adjust (make bigger) the size of these buttons using REGEDIT. It worked for Internet Explorer, Control Panel, and Regedit. Strangely, those settings do not control the MMC buttons in Microsoft Office applications. Does anyone know how to adjust these buttons in Office?

Click to expand...

Hi Rdorrance:

I noticed that the default for CAPTIONWIDTH sits at -330. I've tried -220 and 120 with no change whatsoever. Did you use the WindowsMetrics key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER or HKEY_DEFAULT?

I'd be interested in what you tried. This sounds quite hopeful.

In the meantime, I tried appiying the value -250 and even -270 to the CAPTIONWIDTH string, but no go. CAPTIONHEIGHT does register height changes, but not width. I'll try Windows Style Builder and see where I get. If anyone can chime in and be of assistance, I really appreciate it.

Hmmmmm - it seems that doesn't work. Style Builder cannot apply the themes (and I used it successfully the same way in Vista). Oh well.

Again, If anyone has some insight, I would tremendously appreciate it. I simply want to make the close button more square shaped like XP, but not rectangular.