A very few customers have reported that Dress Shop now opens for them in a very small window, too small to use the program. This problem was first reported in early 2006, when a change to Internet Explorer caused it. A fix was done at that time. The problem has recurred for a few people and we have not been able to duplicate it here at the office or among the testers. So, apparently, we are not guessing the correct combination of hardware, Windows, Internet Explorer, and whatever system settings are needed to make this problem occur.

And, that makes testing a fix for it quite awkward to say the least. We have written a number of new program launchers to try to resolve the issue. Some of them did not work properly with different versions of Internet Explorer (the new beta version of Internet Explorer 8 that Microsoft has posted was the worst offender). And, some did not work with Vista. But, we now have a new launcher that appears to work with all versions of Windows that we can test with, plus all versions of Internet Explorer that we have. It works properly in all test cases that we have. But, since we did not have the appropriate mix of hardware and software that caused the problem in the first place, we cannot know if it will correct the small window problem in those cases or not.

If you are seeing Dress Shop open in a small window and are willing to try a new launcher to see if it resolves the issue, you can get it here:

http://www.LivingsoftNW.com/builds/DressShopPatch.exe

This is a self-extracting WinZip file. After you download it, Run it to install to the default Dress Shop folder location. If you have Dress Shop installed elsewhere, please change the "Unzip To Folder" location when you install this.

After the new launcher is installed, please run Dress Shop and let us know if you still get the small window problem or not. If this does correct the small window symptom, we will revise all Dress Shop updates, download masters, and CD master to use this launcher in place of the old one. If it does not resolve the issue, we will have to get with the tech support folks at Microsoft to see what help they can provide.

Thank you all...