Testing UI Shows Problems on some displays

[Paul Nelson]

Early on in development I've been trying my C# user interface (windows
application) on a number of computers of different ilk. I wanted to be sure
it looks the same as on my development machine. The program is being
developed in Win2000 and tested on both WinXPPro/Win2K and in a number of
different resolution settings in each OS. There are a couple of situations
where the presentation is all messed up. It's as though there is a different
resource file being searched for but then not found. Controls sort of stay
near where they are supposed to but panels are misplaced, forms are
different sizes etc. The whole thing seems like all the properties (whether
dynamically set or not) aren't taking affect. The settings from these
machines that show the failure have been duplicated on machines where all is
well and the problems on these few failures can't be duplicated.

It's time to search for similarities in the failing computers like video
drivers etc. but I'm wondering if this has been seen by anyone else who
might have a simple answer as to what is going on.