Themes and Setup.exe File Size

[csd214]

It is a cold and rainy Sunday.

I am very found of the theme options in SUF7. As expected the resulting Setup.exe size increases when a sophisticated theme is used. But the increment is VERY great. That is not important if you are going to distribute your project on CD-ROMs or through a local network. I am working with a project where the project is distributed through Internet. Some of the customers have a slow connection.

I experimented with Darryl's demo Screen_Sample. It uses the "At Work" theme; resulting Setup.exe is 524,640 bytes. I changed to theme Modern (one of my favourites); Setup.exe = 1,142,276; increment 218%.

I created a new theme Modern80 where each of the jpg files was saved with reduced quality (80%); total of jpg files in the theme was reduced from 92,693 to 24,109 bytes. BUT: The resulting Setup.exe had almost the same size (1,097,274 bytes).

I changed the theme back to At Work, but for each screen (a total of 9) I checked "Override Project Theme", pointed top banner to Modern_Top (side banner for one screen), and emptied the fields Side banner and Body, and set Fill footer = True. Resulting Setup.exe = 524,640 bytes. I have the same output, but the file size is only 46% of what I get when I use Modern as the theme.

My brain protests: "Is this logical?" (I have not much knowledge and experience with images.)

[csd214]

I changed a project as described in my previous post. With default fonts the executable's size was 536,585 bytes. I changed the text font from Arial 9pt to Arial 10pt. The exe went up to 976,223 bytes (+82 %). Is this reasonable?

[JXBURNS]

Don'f forget Modern has one more JPG than "At Work" to cover the colouring of the body. I checked this out using a Hex editor on the resulting Setup file and could see the three JPG files for the former and two for the latter. However does not explain why the SETUP is doubled in size when the body JPG is only 31KB unless it has something to do with the stretching etc. used during the design process.

I have no idea on the font issue though.

John

[csd214]

Both of the themes has 3 jpg files, the total of "At Work" = 69,935 bytes, "Modern" = 92,693 bytes. All of the Modern images have a pixel size of 497x362 whilst At Work goes from 111x63 to 497x362. (That’s why you can use the top banner in Modern to fill the whole screen.)

During the beta period I had a discussion with Corey about this. I think SUF7 was modified during the beta when it comes to the stretching process.

[csd214]

It is NOT the images that increase the file size. It is the FONT issue.

Theme Modern has "Use Custom Fonts"=True (giving exe = 1,142,276 bytes). If I set "Use Custom Fonts"=False, the file size is 542,719 bytes. (I think 8pt is a very small font size.)

Q: WHAT IS "DEFAULT FONTS"?
Is it a setting taken from MY computer (at design time) or it is taken from the end user's computer (runtime)? It is important that that the setup appears on the end users computer like the way the designer sees it.

You can save some bytes by removing Side banner and Body from the theme and when you have a screen that needs the Side banner: Override project settings, add the Side banner and remove the Top Banner. The savings are not important (-17,500 bytes).

Buttons in Modern: They have a flat look (at least on my computer). Element 3D Highlight has color #66728F, should be changed to #FFFFFF. (It is POSSIBLE that I have modified the theme by a mistake).

[Brett]

csd,

When you have Use Custom Fonts set to false then there are no fonts embedded with your setup. The screens use the user's default GUI font at runtime. As soon as yo switch to custom fonts we embed the fonts within the setup. My reccomendation:

When space is important, do not use custom fonts.

[csd214]

Straight explanation and recommendation!

Yesterday (the rainy Sunday) I believed that the file size was a result of the theme images. It would have been a disaster (almost); this feature is marvellous! I wonder when this becomes the industry standard? This Monday morning I understood that I had misinterpreted the behaviour of theme Modern (and I calmed down; "only" the fonts!)

To be honest I don't see the connection between my default GUI and objects like 'Top Banner Subheading' and 'Body Text' (font family and size). Maybe somebody could enlighten me?

[Brett]

As a follow-up, I was looking more into this today and have changed that way that it works for the next service release. Now it will allow you to exclude certain fonts from the build process by face name. For example:

"Arial, Courier New, Times New Roman"

This will allow you to override font settings without having to include them in the setup. We will probably be putting out a service release within a week.

[csd214]

Sounds nice!

I hope it is possible to have more than these three fonts excluded from the build process. What about Tahoma, Verdana and Trebuchet MS? (I don't know what fonts are included as defaults in various Windows versions).

[Brett]

The option will allow you to specify as many fonts for exclusion as you want to.

[csd214]

Just to make it clear:

THERE IS NO "FONT PROBLEM" IN VER 7.0.1.0

And what about the speed: A particular project builds with more than 7 x the speed in v7.0.0.0!

On a PIV runs at MACH 3 !!