Monday, November 13, 2006

Zoom in/Zoom out of spreadsheet comparison (ComplyXL)




The display in ComplyXL can be zoomed to show more or less detail. The zoom factor is controlled by the zoom control.

The most extreme zoom out position is the Map view . In this view all rows of a workbook, no matter how many, are represented in the display.

Zooming in will display rows with increasing height. The most zoomed out position displays one row in one pixel. The next uses two pixel the next 4 pixels and so on.

Conversely, zooming out will decrease the number of pixels used to display each row to a minimum of one row per pixel.

Zooming in and out

There are four options to control zooming in and out.

1) Click on the level of zoom represented by one of the notches of the zoom control.
2) Click on Zoom In or Zoom Out to change the level of zoom by one notch
3) Use the '+' key to zoom in and the '-' key to zoom out by one notch

These three options will zoom in or out keeping the middle of the display centered if possible. it is not possible to maintain this objective when zooming out if, for example, the whole worksheet can be displayed. In this case the display will be shown with the first row at the top of the screen.

The fourth zoom option is to zoom in on a particular row. This is can be done by holding down the control key and clicking on the display at the point containing the row of interested. The display will be zoomed and the selected row centered in the display.

Centering limitations

The graphical display will try to center the row of interest in the zoomed display. Depending upon the zoom factor being used is may not be possible to center the row exactly because ComplyXL will always start the display at the beginning of a cell. This doesn't make any perceptible difference when the display uses one or two pixels to display each row. However at higher magnifications, the slightly off-centered positioning can be noticed.

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