Controls outside the GUI

[czardas]

I am making a portable app which covers the whole desktop. To allow for different sized screen resolutions, the GUI controls are designed to wrap. However, the number of controls added to the GUI can vary, and this could lead to there being too many controls to fit on the screen. My current solution is to warn the user that 'some of the controls may not be available', and then suggest that they 'increase the screen resolution before continuing'. If the user chooses to ignore the warning, then all of the controls will be added by default, even though some of them appear off the screen and outside the area of the GUI.

The program still works, and I am happy with this solution, albeit unconventional. I imagine that most people will take heed of the warning. However, there is still one question which sticks in the back of my mind. Although creating off-screen controls does not cause any errors on my PC, it is not standard practice and I am concerned that it could cause problems that I am not aware of. Besides the fact that you can't click on these controls, are there any other reasons why I should not place controls outside the GUI?

This is a second posting. I originally posted this in the wrong forum by mistake.

UPDATE

I'll take the lack of response to mean: yes, no, maybe and don't know. I suppose there's only one way to really find out, and that is to test it on as many different machines as I can. If I encounter problems then I'll have to rethink my code. I prefer to not have to do that, and keep it simple.

Edited July 30, 2009 by czardas