Hi

we have this behaviour when the DPI settings of the screen are e.g. 125%. Windows doesn't know if your application is DPI aware and does a bitmap scale. You can set the DPI awareness of your application by an API call (not recommended) or through a manifest file. The file should be named <applicationame>.exe.manifest. To test this you can choose "External Manifest" in the security tab when generating the exe and past the content below into the generated manifest file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
  <asmv3:application>
    <asmv3:windowsSettings>
      <dpiAware xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">true</dpiAware>
      <dpiAwareness xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2016/WindowsSettings">PerMonitorV2</dpiAwareness>
    </asmv3:windowsSettings>
  </asmv3:application>
</assembly>

For details: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/hidpi/high-dpi-desktop-application-development-on-windows?redirectedfrom=MSDN

The api call incl. definition is below and has to be set before the first window is drawn e.g. in the application open event. Therefore you won't see any effect when running from the PB ide.

function ulong SetProcessDpiAwareness( ulong value ) library "Shcore.dll"

SetProcessDpiAwareness(2)

The API is available from Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 (to be considered when your application runs on Citrix)

Regards
Arthur

Welcome to windows 10 ! I hate it too how windows is becoming less and less user friendly. Before you would see a title bar, now you don't know where it begins and ends as it's by default white. You can drag a window by clicking on a title bar, you can double click on it to maximise minimise, but now you have the be a pre-windows 10 user to know it even exists and guess where it starts and ends. Let me stop because I can go on and on about other features no longer very visible.

To see something similar to a border, do the following:

Hit the Windows key (the one with the windows logo) on your keyboard and start typing "appearance .."

Then click on "Adjust the appearance and performance of windows"

Then in the following window choose "adjust for best appearance":
(I think it's the "Show shadows under windows" does the trick). So now your modal windows will at least 'appear' to have something similar to a border.

Another thing you might want to do is the next step:

Hit the windows key and start typing "choose your accent colour" (UK) or "choose your accent color" (US?).
When you run that program, on window that I show below, do not choose "automatically pick an accent colour from my background" since then the title / border colour might be the same as your background". 
Pick a colour yourself (you can see I chose "Pale moss"). Then mark "Title bars and window borders" (shown all the way down on the following image:

At least your powerbuilder response windows will look a bit better, even though a lot of dialogs of windows 10 itself will ignore your settings.

Regards,

MiguelL

Hi Miguel,

I tried both your suggestions.  The “Show shadows under windows” and “Choose accent colour” ideas work well.  The AeroLite theme is even better: borders are clearly visible.  Our clients will be able choose either option, which they can implement without Admin rights.

We will also try Arthur's suggestion (add a section to the manifest file) when we next do a test build.

Thanks for you help,

John