I hope this is the right place to post this question. My apologies if it is not.
I am running Inkscape version 48.0 on a 64 bit Windows 7 Home Premium OS.
My problem is as follows.
When working with Inkscape full screen or even nearly full screen (22" monitor) when I click on virtually any of the icons in the menu bar at the top eg: Fill and Stroke, Text, Allign, Preferences, the whole window immediately reduces in size by quite a lot which is upsetting my whole flow of work. Having watched some video tutorials on youtube this would not appear to be normal behaviour.

If this is a known issue is there a resolution to it - in non technical terms please. Help would be appreciated.

Hhmmm.....let me gather a little more info, to be sure I understand what's happening.

When you say "full screen" do you mean View menu > Fullscreen (or F11)? Or do you mean the window is maximized? Does the whole window become smaller? Or does the window stay the same size, and the canvas becomes smaller, making room for the docked dialogs?

If it's docked dialogs that's making the canvas smaller, you can change to floating dialogs in File menu > Inkscape Preferences > Windows > Dialog Behavior (http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... atomy-Dock)

I've tested a little bit with Fullscreen/F11. When I open the 1st docked dialog, it does change from fullscreen back to normal (maximized). But then if I change it back to fullscreen, subsequently opened docked dialogs do not change the view mode. But this only changes the canvas size very little, so I'm guessing that's not your issue.

If none of this solves your problem, maybe we need a little more info

Thanks for your reply brynn and for your investigations on my behalf. You have solved my problem and I now know where I was going wrong.

I was opening Inkscape to what I suppose to be the default size, then using the Windows 'snap' feature to make the programme fill the screen. Then if I clicked on any of the icons I mentioned the whole programme window greatly reduced in size.
I tend to forget about F11 for the fullscreen view, I am so used to using the 'snap' feature with other software without problem that I automatically used it for Inkscape and never thought of that being the problem in this case.

Thanks again for your help.

You're welcome

It's surprising to me how often I'm just fumbling around asking questions and trying to understand the problem, and it actually gives people enough info to find and fix their problems. I guess that's what they call an ugly win....