The Screen tab in the Publication Properties dialog will only appear when the Publication Type set in the Type tab of the Publication Properties dialog is set to DirectX Exclusive – see Type tab for more information.
DirectX is a series of extensions to the basic functionality of Windows and enhances the multimedia capabilities of your computer. DirectX allows a program to be directly controlled by the Video, Graphic and Sound cards of the machine thereby improving the performance for videos, animation and sounds.
However, there are downsides to using the DirectX Exclusive type:
Only one such publication published with DirectX Exclusive can be run by the user at a time
You cannot have the publication run in a window – therefore, the Windows tab is removed from the Publication Properties dialog.
You cannot have multiple windows open at the same time – therefore, the Layout tab is removed from the Publication Properties dialog.
Although the Publish Wizard includes all of the options in which you can publish your publication, in practice, the Create a Standalone Publication option is the only viable one.
Note:
If your publication is mainly video or sound based, you may find the DirectX Exclusive type a very useful method of creating your publications.
The Screen tab will replace the Windows and Layout tab in the Publication Properties dialog.
Note:
This tab will only appear when you have selected the DirectX Exclusive type in the Type tab of the Publication Properties dialog for the current publication.
Use the Change Display Mode to option if you want to temporarily change the screen mode of the user’s computer while the publication is running. This is particularly useful if you want to standardise your page sizes (e.g. 800 x600 page size) because you can also set the screen resolution to the same size (e.g. 800x600) so your publication fills the screen.
Note:
As soon as the user exits a publication, the screen resolution is reset to the user’s preference.
Use the Colour Depth option if you want to set the end-users computer to display a publication at a given colour depth. Click on the down arrow to the right of the box to select a colour depth from the list provided. By default, the No Change option is selected.
Note:
If the graphics driver on the end-users computer cannot support the colour depth you have set, (e.g. the card only supports 16 bpp and below and you have set 24 bpp), then Opus will ignore the option to change the colour depth.
On Windows 95 systems, the graphic drivers do not support on-the-fly colour depth changes, again Opus will make no change to colour depth on these systems. Most Windows 98 drivers (but not all) and everything above Windows 98, will allow colour depth changes, providing that the colour depth you choose is supported by the individual graphic card as explained in the previous paragraph.
Use the Auto Scroll View option if you want to hide the side and bottom scrollbars that appear on a page when the page size of a publication is larger than the display mode; you can auto-scroll instead. Auto scrolling allows you to scroll to other parts of the page by simply moving the cursor to the right or left side of the page or to the top or bottom of the page – the page will automatically scroll in that direction.
Note:
For example, if the page size for a chapter is set to 800x600 but the Change Display Mode to option (point 2 above) is set to 640x480 then the screen is smaller than the page it is trying to display. Therefore, scrollbars will appear on the side and bottom of the screen. With this option ticked, the scrollbars will not appear but you can auto-scroll instead.
Click on the Apply button to save your changes.