The default size of 640 by 480 pixels works fine if you want to fill
the screen on a VGA monitor or on a larger Mac monitor (specifically
the 13" and 14" screens).
However, there is a particular type of monitor
distributed with earlier Macs that does not have that resolution, the
AppleColor 12" monitor.
Furthermore, the Color Mac Classic is incapable
of that sort of pixel resolution as well. If you want to maintain
maximum backward-compatibility, you will design your program with these
systems in mind.
The simplest solution is to set your Stage size
to fit the smaller color Mac displays (this will leave a frame around
the Stage on larger monitors, but there are ways to deal with that,
which we will go into in later parts).
Under Director 4, you use the "Preferences..."
dialog from the "File" menu to set this; under Director 5+ you select
the "Properties..." sub-item from the "Movie" item in the "Modify"
menu.
Set your Stage size to 512
pixels wide by 384 pixels high. These are the dimensions of the
smallest Mac color monitors and will fit on all color-capable Macs or
PCs with VGA displays.
|